


Bed of Rice

by deceptivemirror



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 12:16:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4262979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deceptivemirror/pseuds/deceptivemirror
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story didn't start with Sam and Dean happily in bed together. It didn't start with how their dad raised them, too close for their relationship to be anything but unhealthy and wrong. It didn't start with Sam discovering his sexuality because of Dean. It didn't start with the way Dean loved their father. It didn't start when Sam snuck around and fucked everyone Dean did. It didn't start with Dean being perfectly content to keep their lives the same way forever.</p><p>The story didn't start that way, but this is how it did.</p><p>In a case that takes them to a border town colored with dust and sunsets, Dean and Sam pursue a murderer with a penchant for offing those who are unfaithful to their partners, and everything in their past is just waiting to smash apart any illusions they had and grind them into fine dust.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my lovely artist, kawame_takami, my excellent beta-reader, keep_waking_up, and wendy and paleogymanst for running the Big Bang and the OMGSPNJ2BigBang communities, respectively!
> 
> For the song that inspired this fic, go [here.](https://soundcloud.com/summer-e-2/bedofrice)

_What was he doing?_

His confusion didn’t translate to his body. He kept right on fucking the person below him, driving his cock into the warm body, sure and hard. Soft moaning and groaning filled the otherwise quiet room. The bed didn't even creak.

_What was he doing?_

A particularly hard thrust had the person—the _man_ —below him crying out in shocked pleasure. 

_What was he doing?_

The drunken haze didn't let him do anything but enjoy the heat of the man's ass and the way the man below him was moving, thrusting himself back onto Dean's cock, groaning like he was getting paid for it, muscles flexing and gleaming with sweat. Dean drove himself deep and leaned over the man's back, licking up the sweat on the back of his neck. He couldn't help it. The muscles were mesmerizing.

_What was he doing?_

Dean put more of his weight on the man's back, forcing the other to his elbows. Dean swept the hair off the man's nape with with nose, then licked and sucked at the sweat there, tasting salt, clean skin, and earth. He wanted to make the marks last, like a tattoo, like a scar. He wanted to make sure the man's body read "Dean was here" like a damn billboard with really big lights.

_What was he doing?_

"Harder," the man gasped, spreading his legs wider, inviting Dean in deeper, like he wanted Dean to crawl inside him. Dean helplessly nuzzled at the man's neck and obeyed. Sex like this, as hard and brutal as it was, should have been over a long time ago.  Dean could smell the sour-sharpness of alcohol in his own sweat, and realized it was lingering on his tongue, secreted from the man's skin. He couldn't seem to get enough. He wanted to come, but the booze in his body just kept telling him to try harder.

He still didn't know what he was doing.

Dean snaked a hand around and started jacking the other guy off. After they had both had so much booze, neither one of them should have been able to get it up, let alone have sex. The erection in his hand wasn't fully hard, but it was leaking, the fluid clinging to his fingers and helping keep his movements smooth. The skin was impossibly soft. Dean absently ran his palm over the wet tip a few times, enjoying the sensation of the softness against the roughness of his palm. His partner choked off a gasp as he did it, and Dean moaned in return, feeling the muscles around his cock clenching harder than before. His hand tightened on the other's cock, and with a guttural cry, he came, calling Dean's name over and over, softer and softer, a contrast to the way his body was milking Dean's cock for all it was worth.

It made Dean unexpectedly orgasm as well, straight from the brink of not-being-able-to- finish to finishing too fast, and he whimpered into the other man's neck as he collapsed, cock pulsing deep inside the man's ass as he kept thrusting. He wanted something of himself to remain, even if it wasn't visible, or even possible.

He collapsed onto his side, keeping his weight off the other guy, but trying to stay inside as long as possible. The guy sighed and mumbled something Dean didn't catch, and soon a soft buzzing snore filled the air. Dean smirked. Job well done.

Absently, he lifted his semen-covered hand to his mouth and licked it clean, ignoring the voice in his head that told him doing it could get him a STD. It sounded like Sam's.

Dean pulled out and tied off the condom with the ease of practice, the buzz of booze in his brain not enough to let him forget to take it off. The random taboo thought of what it would be like to fuck without a condom for once ran through his head, but he ignored it. Safety first.

_"Don't have sex without a condom unless you're ready to be a father,"_ Dad used to say. Not a problem here, considering Dean had just fucked a dude, but still, better to be safe.

The guy rolled onto his back, still snoozing away, and Dean sighed a little as he stared at Sam's sleeping face, soft cock lying against one leg, small smears of semen still decorating his abdomen and legs. Dean knew that if he looked between Sam's legs, he'd see his asshole, red and swollen from penetration, slick and shiny with a combination of lube and sweat.

Dean sighed again. As he slipped into dreamland, he realized he really didn't know what either of them were doing.

\---()()---

It didn't start when they were younger.

Dean had bathed Sam and helped him get dressed and taught him how to keep himself clean, but there was never anything about it that was sexual. If anyone had suggested to teenage Dean that he'd one day fuck his brother in a drunken stupor, he'd have either laughed or punched them. Possibly, he’d have laughed while punching them.

After a long period of time being away from them, back when Dean was seventeen and Sam was barely thirteen, their dad had returned and apparently realized his boys were becoming men.  He had sat them down and given them his version of "the talk."

"Boys, someday you're going to want to have sex with women," John Winchester had said, raking a hand through shaggy hair. "That's all fine and dandy, but you need to remember to take care of them. Never lead them on; tell them the truth about what your intentions are, and always, _always_ make sure they're okay with whatever you're doing. I don't care if you're in the middle of it or whatever. She says stop, you damn well stop."

He had gone on to say that it was important to make sure the woman was happy before either Dean or Sam went about making themselves happy, and that it would be worth it in the end. He had talked a while about protection in a dry, lecturing tone of voice that said that sex was a memory to him, and finished with a reminder to be responsible.

At the end of the talk, their dad had clapped them both on the shoulder, told them to make him proud, and walked into the kitchen of the small trailer they had been renting.

The talk, for Dean, had come three years too late.

\--()()--

The sun was so bright it made Dean squint behind the lenses of his sunglasses. It baked everything to a dusty tan, glowing and radiating heat off of cars, roofs, and the bare expanses of sand visible. Even the grass, growing valiantly in the face of an unmerciful environment, seemed a different color than normal.

The desert was like that, Dean figured. Moreover, the Arizona sun was like that.

Small barrel cacti (Dean wondered if it was supposed to be cactuses; he made a note to ask Sam later) dotted the landscape as Dean drove on the 8, looking for a hotel. Dean decided, for once, that they would have an actual hotel room to themselves, instead of a motel. Some hunters of his acquaintance had warned him about staying in the cheaper motels in Yuma, saying that if the cockroaches didn't get you first, the unreliable air conditioning would.

Sam had, unsurprisingly, agreed to Dean's suggestion of a hotel.

Dean read the exit sign for Fortuna Road, coming down off the small mountains leading into Yuma, past a small border checkpoint, and decided to take it. Sam was out for the count, dozing against the car window, and Dean didn't have the heart to wake him up, even though he hadn't had anyone to talk to for the past several hours. Dean figured he could talk to Sam after he found them a room for the duration.

He took a left off the freeway overpass after the exit, and quickly swung a right at the next stoplight, seeing a hotel there that would suit their needs. It looked a bit fancier than their run-of-the-mill dumps (what the hell was a “microtel,” anyway?) but Dean forgave himself the expense.

Rather, Dean forgave the expense on behalf of Roosevelt Cruz, a man with big pockets and inversely small sense.

Dean pulled up in the parking lot of the microtel, but didn't turn the engine off. The heat outside, incredible for a late autumn in October, would quickly make the inside of the Impala a sweat-soaked nightmare if Dean turned off the a/c. Instead, he took a second to look at Sam, and wondered why Sam had a wicked little smile on his face as he slept. He shrugged, not wanting whatever kind of good dream Sam was having to end, but nothing was worse than waking up soaked in sweat after burning a cheek against the window of the Impala.

“Wake up, Sam,” Dean murmured, not even trying to lay a hand on his brother. “We're here.”

At first, Sam didn't make a sound, but suddenly Sam's eyes blinked open, then he yawned and stretched like a cat, nearly braining himself on the Impala's roof. The t-shirt Sam wore rode up, exposing Sam's sleekly-muscled abs and bony hipbones. The bruising from a fall Sam had taken in their last hunt was still visible, tattooed over Sam's skin like a malevolent caress from a careless lover.

Dean must have been more tired than he thought, if he was thinking flowery shit like that. Maybe he should lay off reading some of the books Sam kept in the trunk.

Sam flopped back down in his seat, suddenly boneless. “We here?” He mumbled, hair flopping over his forehead. Dean wanted to brush that hair out of his face.

Ignoring the urge to do that was as easy as breathing by now. Instead, Dean shut the car off, the soothing rumble cutting out with a quiet sigh. “Yeah, we're here,” he said. “Let's get a room.”

Sam took a deep breath before he unbuckled his seatbelt and unlocked the car door. Dean opened the door first, taking a deep breath of the air outside, scented faintly with damp dirt ( _petrichor,_ something in him whispered, some geeky reference he couldn't remember) and smokeless fire. It brought an instant flush to his cheeks, and he got out of the car and walked quickly to the hotel office. Dean knew damn well that Sam was the one who tanned, not him.

Booking the room went relatively fast, though Dean had to correct the receptionist when she attempted to give them a room with one bed. Dean wondered if it had something to do with the way Sam was practically draped over his shoulder, yawning right in Dean's ear. People were quick to jump to conclusions, Dean figured. Sam did that all the time.

The room was disappointingly normal-looking. The number of times Dean had stayed in an actual hotel could have been counted on one hand. John had been a fan of staying under the radar, and that meant out-of-the-way places that were so run-down it was a miracle they stayed open. Dean's standards of a nice place to sleep were a bit skewed, but he definitely appreciated how the room smelled fresh and clean, and the decorations didn't threaten to blind him.

Bland, clean, and fairly quiet. Dean had stayed in much worse.

“This is weird,” Sam muttered, putting his bag next to the window.

“Yeah, but it's nice,” Dean replied. “Besides, this city ain't known for its size.”

“Been through here before?” Sam asked, sounding surprised.

“When I came to get you from Stanford, I came through here,” Dean said, looking at the floor. “Some good food places, but the heat's insane. Some of the people are too.” Dean chuckled wryly. “However, the place is great for the senior citizen population.”

“If they have arthritis, sure,” Sam agreed, looking at the tastefully pulled-aside curtain. “We're going to have to crank up the air conditioner a lot if either of us are going to sleep.”

“Dad’s had us stay in places just as hot without it before,” Dean said wryly. “I don't miss those times a bit.”

The words were out of his mouth before Dean considered the way they had sounded, but Sam either hadn't taken notice or wasn't paying as much attention as he usually did, because all Dean got for a response was a hum of acknowledgement.

Sam flopped onto the bed, and it barely responded to the sudden weight of six foot-something grown man on it. Dean grinned a little. If the bed was that firm, he'd have no trouble trying to get to sleep tonight. He tested it by flopping onto his own, and it didn't even groan. It was such a change from the usual crappy beds that he could have cried.

“I could sleep right now,” Sam muttered, still spread-eagled on the other bed.

“Don't see why,” Dean sniped back, staring at the ceiling. He was trying to keep himself from looking at Sam. Sam wasn't going to disappear or die on him, no matter what his occasional nightmares tried to tell him. “You slept half the day away.”

“If that last damn hunt hadn't been enough to keep me awake for the rest of my life, that stupid bed in the last dump we stayed in would have,” Sam grumbled. “It was so damn uncomfortable I'd have rather slept on the hood. While you drove.”

Dean grunted half-heartedly, but didn't bother to reply. The beds in the last place _had_ been awful, and at one point, Dean had just made a nest on the floor and slept there instead of trying to use the mattress. His spine had actually thanked him the next morning. Once Sam had been able to stand up without vomiting, he had made his own nest and joined Dean on the floor. If the cleaning staff had noticed it, they hadn't commented.

“Should we get dinner?” Dean finally suggested, far too comfortable to want to get up, but also feeling a little hungry.

“I don't want to move,” Sam grumbled, unconsciously echoing Dean's thoughts. Dean sometimes wondered if it was the powers Sam had had once that let him guess what other people were thinking. When he looked at Sam, he just knew that, even in Sam's most relaxed moments, Sam was hiding something.

Of course, they had both suffered through those sprung-mattress crap beds, so it wasn't a leap to figure out what Dean was thinking.

“Order pizza?” Dean suggested, lazily turning his head toward Sam.

“Mmmf, fine,” Sam said, turning to the window, his back to Dean. A strip of skin at Sam's lower back was showing, probably because Sam's shirt had rucked up with the movement. “I want mushroom and green peppers on my half.”

Dean fumbled for his phone, grumbling and wishing, not for the first time, that his phone had actual buttons again.

\--()()--

Sam had fucked guys. He wasn't virginal in that aspect, and it hadn't mattered much to him who knew. People said that college was supposed to be a time of exploration and experimentation, but Sam had been sexually active since before he was in high school. Dean never knew, and Sam was pretty sure that Dad wouldn't have been able to tell, even if he'd cared to figure it out. Even when he was a kid, Sam had known their dad wouldn't have liked knowing that some men wanted to fuck other men. Some people were products of their generation, and in the most weirdly polite way there was, John Winchester was one of them. He wouldn't rant or rave against it, but Sam remembered the “talk” they had been given, and knew damn well the only possible sexual partners he thought Sam and Dean should have were women.

Sam, on the other hand, had never really given a damn who had what equipment, as long as he liked what was going on between their ears.

Men, for a lot of reasons, were easier, Sam found. It helped that he was smaller and more delicate-looking than his peers. Guys didn't have as much of a problem having sex with another guy if the other guy looked girly, he had found.

When Sam looked back over his memories, sometimes he hated the fact that he'd lost his virginity to some random football player before he'd even kissed a girl.

He’d told Dean his first time was with some fellow library-lover when he was sixteen, but only long after the fact. His real first time had been behind the bleachers with one of the same guys who had been bullying him. The guy had practically begged to suck his cock, one eye still black, and Sam had been curious enough to let him do it.

While the guy was groaning around his mouthful, the way Dean did when he had a good slice of pie, Sam let his hand, the same hand that had beaten the guy senseless for attacking Amy, rest against the guy's neck. He didn't grab the guy's throat, but let his hand brush against the skin there, feeling the frantic pulse and the wet click of his throat through the slurping.

Sam never forgot for the rest of his life that the guy came just from sucking his dick and the small threat of getting killed by that hand. He never forgot that he came down the guy's throat when the guy rammed his face into Sam's crotch, taking him all the way down and moaning around his cock, the vibration taking him over the edge.

He wondered what it said about him, that no other blowjob since could get him off unless he made it clear, somehow, that he had the upper hand.

\--()()--

The hum of the air conditioner and the full stomach from the pizza put Sam to sleep even faster than the hum of the Impala's engine, and for once, he managed a fairly decent night's sleep. Dean didn't have to know that the only decent rest he got these days was when he was in the car, or watching Dean sleep. Since Dean was a natural night owl, it meant Sam spent a lot of time trying to keep himself awake until Dean fell asleep. Insomnia in those circumstances was something Sam had gotten used to, since he didn't sleep well any other way.

After hearing about some unusual murders, they came to investigate the tiny little border town. It wasn't unusual for some gang and drug-related violence or deaths to happen here, Sam understood.   People dying in their homes in poses that should have been impossible to attain without any help at all? The murders definitely seemed like something supernatural.

Even considering the good night's sleep, Sam still woke up before Dean, the habit of a lifetime getting him up with the sun. He noted with a small grin that he had managed to stay in the same position he had fallen asleep in, and he and Dean were facing each other. Dean's face was relaxed, some drool wetting the corner of his mouth and the pillow, his mouth slightly open as he snored, and his face relaxed into the kind of smoothness Dean no longer had while awake. Looking at him now, Sam could briefly fool himself into thinking that Dean was still that young adult handing him a bag that felt heavier than it should have, even considering his entire life had been in there from the time he could carry it.

He fantasized that he had managed to convince Dean to leave John behind, and they would go together to Stanford, where Dean would take classes at a local college and work wherever he wanted, and Sam would study hard and eventually become a lawyer. He would then buy them a gorgeous house near the Bay, where Dean would attempt to tan, and Sam would laugh at him and put aloe on his back, and they would just live. They would keep California safe from ghosts and other beings, and only travel when they felt like it. Sam would never have to worry about Dean leaving him the way he'd had to leave Dean, because they'd both be happy together.

Dean's nose scrunched in his sleep, and his snores took on a rougher quality. Like he had so many times before, Sam pulled himself reluctantly from the fantasy and rolled onto his back, so he wouldn't get caught staring at Dean while he woke up. By now, he had this down to a science.

While he stared at the ceiling and waited for Dean to fully join the land of the living, he figured out their day. This place had a continental breakfast, so Sam would at least be spared the sight of Dean stuffing his cheeks with pig fat, grease, and pancakes. If there was one flaw in Dean, Sam figured it had to be his food choices.

It was time for suits today; they had to pretend to be FBI to get access to the crime scenes. Sam, despite having seen some truly heinous crime scenes in his life, always chose to eat lightly, or not at all, when he knew he'd have to see gore or dead bodies. He had thrown up at a crime scene once, before he'd left for Stanford. Dean had managed to turn him away fast enough so that he hadn't messed up the evidence, but from the way John had lectured him after, Sam had almost wished he had vomited on something important, just to have some revenge.

As soon as they had showered and dressed in their suits (Sam dimly remembered owning one good suit at Stanford; it had fit him perfectly and gone up in flames with Jess), Sam immediately regretted having to wear it. The air conditioner in their little room (quiet, so _weird,_ only the hum of the cooler and Dean's snores; no raucous laughter, breaking bottles, or sporadic gunshots like he and Dean usually had) had done a pretty good job of keeping him comfortable. Outside, even at nine in the morning, it was already approaching unbearable. Sam's hair went from cool and damp on the back of his neck to warm and dry in what felt like seconds.

He glanced at Dean and almost laughed, despite his own misery. Dean's eyes were nearly shut due to the brightness, and his hair had suddenly fluffed, rid of the residual water from his shower. Sam thought he looked adorable, and also knew that Dean would go straight for the FBI-style sunglasses he kept in the Impala's glove-box and fix his hair after they got to where they were going.

Dean was silent, cradling the disposable cup of coffee he'd snagged from the continental breakfast line, but Sam knew better than to take it personally. It always took forever for Dean to wake up unless something serious was going on, so Sam was content to be quiet and hold Dean's coffee as he got himself settled into the driver's seat and took out the sunglasses. Sam handed the coffee back to Dean, shaking his hand a bit to get rid of the faint remnant of warmth. Even tired, he didn't understand how Dean could even stand drinking something that hot in this weather.

Dean drank some of the coffee while he turned on the engine, and with a grimace, he opened his door again as Sam sat down, and dumped the liquid out onto the ground.

“Too hot,” he complained.

“I'm not surprised,” Sam replied, shaking his head. “I wondered why you even bothered.”

“Didn't sleep too well.” Dean shrugged. “I thought the pick-me-up would help some.”

“Just turn on the air conditioner before we roast,” Sam sighed. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“Some place called the Catalina Apartments,” Dean said. “That's where all the the murders and shit happened.”

“Ready when you are,” Sam said, patting his suit jacket's pocket. “Got the notebook and everything.”

Instead of answering verbally, Dean cranked the air conditioner on to full blast and put the car into reverse.

Sam didn't bother keeping track of directions, since Dean was using the GPS on his phone. He just looked at the scenery as it flew by (literally, it seemed; the speed limit was higher than most) and tried not to think about his dreams, or the morning fantasy he used to get himself through the day.

The apartment complex was small, was Sam's first thought. It was an open two-story building with a tiny inner courtyard. There was a central table where a fountain would normally be, a bleached umbrella giving off a semblance of shade. Even though the place was clean, it had a shabby air all around it. The stairs were sturdy enough, but they wobbled and creaked as they climbed. Sam made sure to be careful and hold onto the rail.

The view from the second floor wasn't impressive, Sam thought, but the heat reflecting off the deck was. It had apparently been washed recently, and what water hadn't evaporated was sitting in small warped, sunken pockets in the floor. Sam shook his head and resisted the urge to somehow step more carefully. If the floor was going to collapse, it would probably have done it long before Sam and Dean had come there.

Sam found the yellow crime scene tape easily enough; against the faded grey-beige of the building, the lurid color stood out even more than usual. Dean stepped in front of Sam at that moment, taking in the cordoned-off corner apartment. “I don't see any cop cars around here,” Dean said calmly, standing with a more relaxed posture than usual. Sam privately called it his “parade rest.”

“Think they already came and went?” Sam asked incredulously. “Even the _normal_ FBI would have still been here!”

“Isolated incidents,” Dean pointed out, jerking a thumb at the yellow-taped apartment. “There's only been, what two of these things? Three people would better indicate some kind of pattern.”

“Good point,” Sam conceded. “This one, and the ground floor one, right?”

“Yeah,” Dean agreed. “It's just that this one is closer to the street. It'll be easier to get out if someone comes along that we can't somehow bluff.”

Sam nodded, and took one more look around before he committed to going inside. The houses around the apartment were quiet, and no people seemed to be around. An older style white Honda ghosted by on the street, slowing down with its turn-signal indicating a right. The sky was an almost painfully pale blue, with a weird heat-haze around where the sidewalk and ground were wet from still-dribbling sprinklers.

Going into the apartment, Sam wasn't any more impressed than he had been earlier. The place was a dump. Something caught at the corner of his eye and he sighed, realizing that he was seeing parts of the past. Yet another ability he hid from Dean, and he _hated_ that he did, but he couldn't help but use it, since it often helped them with their cases. He never knew how to feel about it, but buildings had memories, and sometimes, the building showed them to him.

Two women were moving through the apartment. The blur to their movements told Sam that this had occurred several years before, as opposed to something recent, but Sam couldn't help but watch. The women bore a striking resemblance to each other, but one was much younger; Sam figured they were mother and daughter. They were smiling at  
each other and laughing in the kitchen at one minute, and the next they were hanging out on a couch (which was only a vague outline, so Sam almost felt like they were sitting on air) while the younger woman rubbed the older woman's feet. The older woman sat up and held the younger one by the back of her neck, and the younger woman, a brunette with curly hair, smiled softly.

Sam was sad about it, but the last image he saw of either person was of the younger woman and two men cleaning out the apartment. The younger woman was punching a wall and crying while the two men tried to stop her.

The next thing he saw was considerably more recent, since the image was more solid. An older guy sat on the saggiest couch Sam had ever seen, slouched over. A stack of empty alcohol bottles were sitting nearby, and the man himself was shirtless, baring what looked like a fairly impressive physique, covered with tattoos. Suddenly, he grabbed one of the bottles and threw it right at Sam, and even though he knew it couldn't hurt him, he still flinched as it went through him to crash against the windows behind him.

“Sam?”

Dean's voice pulled Sam back to the present, and the guy disappeared as soon as Sam blinked. Dean stood there, hands on his hips and an irritated expression on his face. Sam realized that Dean must have been trying to get his attention for the past few minutes. He blinked again, and abruptly wished he hadn't.

The apartment, already not the biggest place, was soaked in blood. Sam knew the human body had a lot of blood in it, but from the splatter, the man's body must have been completely drained. Blood coated the wall, and had soaked into the carpet. Since the air conditioner in the apartment must have been off for a while, the entire place smelled like decomposing meat and burned copper. A pale chalk outline was a reminder of where the victim had breathed his last.

It was against a wall, Sam noted. That shouldn't have been possible. A deep cut in the wall, outlined with blood instead of chalk, demonstrated that the victim had died, pinned to the wall through his neck.

Like a bug on a board, Sam figured, barely repressing a shudder.

“Poor bastard didn't have a chance,” Dean muttered, after Sam gave him a nod. Either he hadn't seriously noticed Sam's preoccupation, or didn't care enough to call him on it. “I just wonder how the local cops didn't catch this.”

“People don't see things they can't understand,” Sam replied, trying not to sigh at the unintentional double meaning in his words. “We haven't had a chance to check the medical examiner's notes, but I can see the guy must have been stabbed much harder than a human could ever do.”

“Medical examiner after the next apartment,” Dean agreed, sounding reluctant. “Good thing they have air conditioning. Let's get out of here. My stomach's starting to hate me.”


	2. Part Two

If someone had asked Sam, when he was a kid, if he would ever actually have sex with Dean, he would have laughed in that person's face, and it wasn't even because of the suggestion of incest.

John had tried keeping Sam in the dark about what they did as a family, but what John hadn't counted on was Sam's ability to research. After a short amount of time, Sam knew everything about monsters that John wasn't telling him, and it wasn't only because of Dean sneaking Sam information the way he gave stray cats food. John was very much a “need-to-know” parent. Once Sam was in puberty, it was depressingly easy to realize that John didn't think he needed to know much.

As time went on, he realized that, in John's mind, Dean apparently needed to know even less.

If Sam had thought that it would have worked out for him and Dean, Sam might have called child services himself a long time ago. John never told them how long he'd be gone, or even precisely where he was going. It got better as the years went on, or John maybe learned more about how to be responsible, but Dean basically became Sam's dad from a young age. Even considering a few problems back when he'd been a true kid, Dean was better at the whole parenting thing than John.

Dean and Sam had slept in the same bed for as long as he could remember. John hadn't seemed to realize the importance of two young boys each having their own bed and space, because more than once, Sam had been woken up by frantic panting and the barely-wet rasp of palm on skin. Since he never let on that he was awake at those times, and really didn't want to ask Dean what he was doing, he had to research that too.

A few years later, he chose to use the bathroom instead of the bed for his masturbation. In Dean's defense, he at least waited until he thought Sam was asleep before he chose to rub one out.

Even when Sam started masturbating, he never thought Dean doing it was sexy. The sounds he made were weird, and the way Dean seemed to like a dry hand seemed more painful than arousing.

Sam would never have considered himself the type to be a conspiracy theorist, but sticking two horny boys in the middle of nowhere with no one else to be around almost sounded like John wanted something to happen between them.

Attraction to other boys aside, Sam had always enjoyed doing the exact opposite of what John wanted. It might have been the only reason he hadn't tried anything with Dean.

\--()()--

The poor bastard's name had been Victor Jimenez, thirty-three years old, recently single, with two separate women carrying his babies. Dean figured that the local cops had seen enough to think that one of the two women had killed him for cheating. Dean personally wouldn't have a problem with that, but the cops interviewing the women didn't seem to want to accept the fact that both women had alibis for the time of death given.

One woman had been in the process of obtaining an abortion, and the other had been leaving her doctor's office with a prescription for an abortifacient. The cops were definitely barking up the wrong trees there. Even if neither woman had reason to miss Jimenez, neither one seemed the type to kill a man just because he couldn't keep it in his pants.

There was also the niggling fact that neither woman, even with heels on, was tall enough to have achieved the correct angle of entry to stab the victim through the neck. A step-stool would have had to have been involved, which would have affected the blood splatter. There also hadn't been a step-stool in the apartment. Jimenez couldn’t have stood perfectly still while getting stabbed, and the only drug in his body at the time had been alcohol. Dean wasn't sure how the medical examiner had gotten enough blood to test, but with four times the legal limit in him, Jimenez would have needed help to stand up.

The other victim had been a woman, Brie Maxwell, who might well have been murdered by a regular human, considering that she had been seeing three men at the same time. She had been pregnant in her first trimester when she had been killed. Only one of the men she had been seeing had a plausible alibi, and the other two had rap sheets that would only make them more suspicious to the cops. Maxwell had been found face-down over the lid of her bathtub. Her head had been bashed in. Blood and brains had been all over the bathroom, and a lot of the blood had pooled and stayed in the bathtub, like a homage to Elizabeth Bathory's beauty treatments. The medical examiner had found some wine and steak in her stomach, possibly indicating that Maxwell either hadn’t known she was pregnant or hadn't cared enough not to indulge. Dean guessed he'd never know the answer.

Sam had gone strangely silent and pale when they'd gone into Maxwell's apartment, and had stood still for a solid minute when they'd gone into the bathroom. Dean was used to him doing that—Sam did it every time they had to see a new crime scene—but there had been tears in his eyes in the first apartment. Dean figured it was a good thing he hadn't called attention to it. The last thing he wanted to do was embarrass Sam by bringing it up, even though crying was something men did, sometimes.

The local library was a surprisingly busy place, surrounded by some of the first trees Dean saw that weren't of the palm variety, and a few train cars sitting near a small river bank. It was one of the first places in town that Dean thought was actually beautiful. The second floor of the library was actually the first floor, with a staircase leading down to the childcare center, and the associated books. Paper scanners and old newsreels gave no new information regarding the crimes. Plenty of other crimes of a supernatural nature had happened in Yuma (Dean wrote them down for future research), but nothing seemed related to what had brought them here.

That took up most of two days. The evening of the second day found Dean and Sam sitting in the hotel room on their respective beds, trying to go through what notes they had for the case. The families of the murder victims had come forth to claim the bodies while they had been been haunting the library's film reel room, scanning old newspaper articles. Burials for both victims were somehow scheduled for the next day, which seemed unbelievably slow to Dean.

Then again, he'd always expected that he'd have a hunter's funeral, which would have taken place right after his death, so maybe his perception was a bit skewed.

“Address and the fact they're cheaters,” Sam finally said, setting the laptop down next to him. He hadn't spoken for a while, and the sudden sound made Dean jump. “There are no other connections. None of the same friends, no relations, different jobs, everything. No other similarities.”

“The Maxwell woman had a pretty good job,” Dean said, feeling confused. “She could have afforded a much nicer place.”

“I was just in her bank records,” Sam said, tossing his hair out of his face. Dean resisted the urge to tell him that made him look like a chick, even if it had been weirdly pretty. “She was in some heavy-duty debt. Aside from normal expenses, she was shelling out half of her remaining paycheck a month to some dude.”

“She had been married before,” Dean sighed, holding up a paper and suddenly feeling less confused. “Looks like she was paying spousal support and child support to her ex-husband, who also has primary physical custody. She hadn't even tried to see her kid for _months._ Too busy with those three guys, I'd bet.”

“Poor kid,” Sam murmured. “Still, if it were me, I'd have put that kid with the dad too.”

“So we're stuck at square one,” Dean grumbled, resisting the urge to throw his papers everywhere. “Back to the library, see if anyone else died on premises?”

“After we get interviews from the so-called bereaved parties,” Sam replied, eyes trailing over Dean's face. Dean hadn't said anything, but he had noticed Sam did that a lot. “Maybe we should also attend the funerals. Maybe, if we can fully rule out a criminal mastermind, we can focus all our attention on non-human causes.”

“I like it, Sammy,” Dean said. “Let's also interview the building manager of that apartment complex. It'd lend us a bit more credibility as FBI.”

Sam nodded, and looked pleased. They'd notified the building supervisor of their intent to examine the premises, but hadn't had the chance to interview him in person.

Just then, their cells phones started ringing. Dean had his out first and answered breathlessly, “Agent Hall speaking.”

“Agent Hall, you and Agent Oates better get to the Catalina Apartments fast,” an angry male voice said. “There's been another murder.”

\---()()---

Sam had never been gentle during sex.

His earlier experiences hadn't been anything other than rough, for everyone involved. Sam had sometimes wondered, with extreme self-deprecation, if he was even capable of gentleness outside of dealing with victims and their families. His experiences had told him otherwise.

Jess had been the closest he had come to true softness in the bedroom. She had been able to match him in everything he had done, and was one of the tallest and strongest women he had ever had the chance to meet. She had even thrown him around a few times, which Sam hadn't expected to find sexy, but did anyway. It had probably just been because it was Jess. Jess with her green eyes, Jess who had reminded him of Dean. Jess, who had helped him learn what normal life could be like, with her normal parents and her normal schoolwork and her normal sleep patterns.

None of his sexual encounters with men had been anything other than animalistic. Men hadn't wanted to be gentle with Sam, and Sam hadn't found it in himself to be gentle with men either. Almost without exception, once he got older, the men he had chosen to fuck were smaller than him (not difficult to find), and physically weaker.

Violence had been foreplay. The long-ago beatdown of that football player had only been the beginning. Sam’s sexuality had awakened that fateful day, and it had set him up for a cycle he had been unable to escape.  The first time Sam had been fucked, fourteen years old and suddenly tall, he had been riding the guy's lap, bouncing up and down harshly. Sam had bled that first time. The boy had been apologetic. Sam had demanded round two, still slicked with blood and lube. The boy had agreed, but not before he had insisted that Dean be told that Sam was sleeping over.

Sam hadn't bothered remembering his name; he, Dean, and John had left town the next day. That boy had opened a few new avenues in Sam's head, and he had taken advantage of them, thinking about ways to satisfy his newfound desires without letting John know.

Dean had started sneaking out when Sam had been old enough to cover for him. Dean had been gorgeous, eighteen, and convincing enough to fool people into thinking he was old enough to drink. Sam may have wanted Dean to himself all the time, hated being left alone when Dean wanted to leave, but he had known better than to try to keep Dean nearby when Dean had that manic look in his eye. It had eaten at Sam's insides, but it had been better to let Dean go do what he needed to do than to try to stop him.

Sam hadn't desired Dean sexually until the first time he had been fucked. Before that point, he had been aware of some kind of incomplete frustration in his feelings for Dean, a sense of something missing. It had gnawed at him, though he had been happy enough. Sam hadn't been able to figure it out for the longest time, but after that night he had spent 'studying' (Dean's words that night; _“good luck studying with that other kid, Sam; don't scare him with that big brain of yours”_ ) with that boy, lying close and reeking of sweat and jizz, Sam had realized exactly what he hadn't had with Dean.

Dean was Dean. Green eyes, freckles, and a belly pudge he had never been able to get rid of and had sworn Sam to secrecy over, since John would have made him do even more drills to try and lose it. Dean had been only slightly taller than Sam, sudden and simultaneous growth spurts surprising the both of them. Dean had been a wiseass, a caretaker, a gentle touch with children, and hell on wheels for adults. Sam hadn't been able to understand how he could want Dean sexually.

Several days after that study date, Sam had taken a shower before dinner. It had been cold outside, and Sam had been covered in sweat because of the training John had insisted on before they could come inside. Sam had the second shower, since Dean showered in about ten minutes flat and John had run into town to buy supplies. Sam hadn't had a better time to experiment, secure behind the bathroom door and with the falling water to cover any sounds.

Growing up as closely as they had, Dean had never felt the need to hide the changes his body had undergone from Sam's curious eyes. Sam had had Dean firmly in mind and was comfortable, the warm water soothing the growing pains and the exercise aches from his body. Exercise had started having a stimulating effect on Sam's ever-moody dick, rising and falling with the times, and never in the appropriate position in the right time. The opportunity had been perfect. Sam had managed to jerk off in the shower before, shoving a fist in his mouth to cover his groans, before anyone had gotten suspicious and banged on the door.

No matter how hard Sam had tried to picture Dean naked, his dick, despite encouragement from his hand, had stayed stubbornly soft.

Frustrated, Sam had finished bathing in record time, shut off the water, and dried himself furiously with the towel. Sam had wondered about having sex with Dean, and his body hadn't wanted to play ball. Sam had to have been wrong somehow. Sex with Dean hadn’t been the part of the puzzle missing from the box. There had to have been some kind of mistake.

Sam had wrapped the towel around his waist and walked out of the bathroom stiff and angry, parts of him still dripping with rapidly-cooling water.

“Sammy, why didn't you dry off?” Dean had asked, looking at him from his position on one of the hotel beds. Dad had taken a room of his own and left them to their usual devices, as per usual.

Sam had shrugged. Dean had tapped the bed next to him, and Sam had blindly obeyed. Once he had sat, Dean had gotten up and returned shortly with a dry towel. Without comment, he had started to roughly dry Sam's hair with it.

Sam's eyes had widened at the treatment, before he had relaxed. Dean hadn't done this for him in a few years, but Sam had always loved it.

“Sam, you could catch a freaking cold,” Dean had muttered, moving the towel to drag across Sam's shoulders. Cheap terrycloth, worn thin from thousands of other uses and endless wash and dry cycles, had barely sopped up the water still on Sam's skin. “What are we going to do if you get sick? You know money’s tight right now, and we can’t afford a doctor.” Each word had been punctuated by the rasp of the towel on Sam's body.

“Just didn't want to be in there anymore,” Sam had answered, suddenly feeling breathless. He hadn't been facing Dean. Dean had barely even touched him, and certainly not in a sexual way. His dick hadn't gotten the memo, because, despite everything, it was rising to attention the way it had refused to do in the shower, tenting the towel wrapped around his hips. Sam had tried not to panic, and had clasped his hands in his lap, trying to will himself down.

“Water pressure's shit,” Dean had agreed absently, focusing on the small of Sam's back above where the other towel sat. A few swipes later, the towel had landed on Sam's head, completely blocking Sam's vision. “Finish off the rest yourself. I don't know about you, but I'm hungry, and you're not answering the door for Dad in that damn towel. He'll probably make us do sprints again.”

Sam had taken the towel off his head in time to see the bathroom door shut and hear the clank of the toilet lid. Knowing that they had had bean and cheese burritos for lunch, Sam had known Dean would be in there for a while.

Sam had held the towel Dean had used in his hand, dick still uncomfortably hard, but subsiding, and had come to a realization. It had never been Dean's body that Sam had wanted. Dean had been in the bathroom, some truly vile sounds coming from there, and Sam could not have been less attracted to a person if he had tried, considering what he was hearing. It had been just Dean, with all his personality and his heart, that Sam had discovered he wanted. Dean, completely focused on him, body, mind, and soul, had Sam aching in a way he hadn't realized was possible.

Sam had just wanted Dean, every part of Dean, that he could have. Dean's body had had nothing to do with it.

\---()()---

From the beginning, Sam wasn't a brother so much as he was a responsibility.

The only words that ever came out of Dad's mouth when it came to Sam were “take care of Sam.” There were so many possible ways that could be taken. Dean loved Sam and wanted to take care of him. Sam was family.

Sometimes, though, Dean lost the blood relation aspect of it to the responsibility.

When Sam was a baby, since Dad had been pretty much useless during that time, Dean had had to feed him. Since Sam had been a baby, that meant changing diapers. It also meant bathtime. Dean had been seeing Sam naked for years. Dad had spent most of those nights in booze-driven sleep when he hadn't dropped them off with people he met.

When Sam had become a toddler and started walking, Dean had been the one who had had to potty-train him. Dad had been out of state going after a chupacabra or a wendigo or whatever kind of supernatural critter had taken him away at the time. Missouri Mosely, they found out later,  had thrown Sam and Dean a party after she realized what Dean had done. The dutiful call to inform Dad that Sam had used the potty like a big boy got a distracted huff and a potential return time of “whenever the job's done.”

After Sam turned seven, Dad had come home looking weirdly relaxed and bearing presents. Dean and Sam alike had gotten some clothes from the thrift store. Only Dean had gotten a fresh pack of underwear. Since Dad had left them with Pastor Jim almost immediately after and Dean had been too embarrassed to tell Pastor Jim that Sam didn't have undies, he ended up sharing his older pairs with Sam. The thought of Sam's little package rubbing up against cloth that had been against Dean's own groin wouldn't have a weird appeal until later.

The cheerleader taking his virginity a few years later had been a revelation. The only woman Dean had ever really been around, other than his mother, was Missouri Mosely, even though he hadn’t remembered her and _definitely_ didn't think of her sexually. Women were _awesome_ , Dean had decided afterward. They were soft and wet and kind and smelled good. If he treated them nicely, they gave him hugs, kisses, and sex. He really, _really_ liked the sex.

It also led to him thinking for a long time that women were a commodity. Since he moved around so much, he didn't bother trying to keep to one. He figured he was doing fine by them as long as he was nice and kept quiet about who else he might have been doing at the time.

One high school, two girls, and Sam suddenly becoming a little badass had changed his mind. He hadn't realized he'd been cruel. He really hadn't gotten that no one except assholes respected him for hopping from bed to bed. Nomadic as their family was, it had still taken way too long, in his opinion, to get the hell away from that school. Getting away from his shame had taken longer.

He didn't have sex again until Rhonda Hurley and her suspicious, perfect-sized pink panties had entered his life. It had been a whirlwind while he was with her. She was insatiable in the bedroom, which he had loved, and he loved how adventurous she was too. He'd let her try out things on him that he'd never have thought of or let someone else do in a million years, including spanking.

While he was wearing those panties.

He hadn't expected to love being spanked and ordered around in the bedroom as much as he had. She'd had a wickedly strong arm that had left him begging for more and crying for her to stop by turns, only for her to introduce him to pegging, then demand he fuck her afterward. He often left her house smiling, exhausted, and hurting by turns. Sam had known he was seeing her, but thankfully had no idea what they'd gotten up to, beyond the sex.

Sam _certainly_ didn't have to know that he wore the panties for the next few days, only taking them off to shower and jerk off. He also didn't have to know that Dean kept a scrap of the panties in his duffle bag, sewn into a small inner pocket, and took it out when he needed to remember that perfect sense of peace he'd had when Rhonda had spanked him.

It was a feeling he spent the next several years of his life chasing down. 

\---()()---

Sleep, Sam decided, could go fuck itself.

The murder victim at the apartments was another ground floor resident, and had lived directly below Jimenez. The man, Boris Walburg, had been stabbed through the pelvis, which had both Dean and Sam wincing. Two angry women were arguing out front, chaperoned closely by a uniformed police officer. Cop cars with flashing lights were everywhere, and another uniformed officer, a woman with a no-nonsense look on her face, gave them a run-down of what they would see once they went inside. Most of the time, Sam appreciated knowing what he’d see beforehand, but the idea of being stabbed _there_ gave him the creeps.

“Looks like a break-in, but wasn't,” the cop said, tugging at a loose strand of her hair. “At the time of the murder, no one heard anything, just like with the other two—”

“No one told us that,” Sam interrupted sharply, a sudden anger flaring to life. “Not one person thought that would be a useful thing for us to know?!”

“Rookies,” the woman sighed, sounding frustrated. “We've taken them off the case. The ME's already done her thing, so if you want to take a look around, go ahead.”

Sam nodded to her and stepped to the door, grateful that he and Dean had thought to put their suits back on before heading to the crime scene. As hot and uncomfortable as it was, Sam knew their reception wouldn't have been nearly as welcoming if they hadn't looked professional.

The apartment's interior was much cooler than it was outside, and Sam wanted badly to remove his jacket, but knew better. Once again, blood was liberally splashed everywhere in the apartment, far more than there should have been for the injury involved. Sam tried to observe everything as dispassionately as possible, wondering why he wasn't seeing a past image, like he usually did.

No sooner had he thought that than Sam saw one of the women outside walk somehow _through_ Dean, who didn't appear to notice. Sam tried hard not to cringe at the sight, but he _hated_ it when images did that. He didn't want the reminder that Dean, no matter how important, wasn't as solid and permanent as Sam wanted.

The medical examiner had finished and taken the body, like the cop outside had said. Sam saw the see-through woman stop and stare at the wall. Like Jimenez in everything except the death-dealing injury, the man was stuck to the wall by a knife, blood-covered blade glinting darkly through the open skin of his abdomen and pelvis.

The woman's image opened her mouth in what had to have been a scream. Right after, the other woman, naked except for a bedsheet, burst out of what had to have been the bedroom, and upon seeing what the other woman was screaming about, started screaming herself.

“It's something else, all right,” Sam said, almost to himself. He knew Dean had good ears, and he didn't want to alert any sharp-eared cop outside.

“What do you think, Sam?” Dean asked, also in a lower voice.

“If we interview those women outside,” Sam said, trying not to let the vision still playing in front of his eyes affect his words, “I'm willing to bet they'll both swear up and down they didn't do it. We also have to find out if one of the women was here while the murder happened.”

“Considering the catfight outside, I'm willing to bet they weren't having a threesome,” Dean cracked, not even smiling at the joke. “Good plan. You have a preference?”

Thinking about what one of the women _wasn't_ wearing, Sam repressed a sigh; he knew which one Dean probably wanted to interview. “I'll take the one with her clothes on, thanks.”

Sam paid attention to what the woman was saying, but didn't bother remembering her name. Everything she said correlated with the vision of her he'd seen. She had been given a key to the guy's place, but Boris had scheduled times when she wasn't supposed to come over.

“He said he had privacy-related projects,” she said, finishing up her account. “I thought I'd surprise him, and got shocked twice!” She sighed. “I'd had a feeling for a while that he'd been cheating on me, and I was actually coming tonight to break things off with him.”

“Okay, miss,” Sam said, noting that down. “You don't think the other woman killed him, do you?”

“ _Think_ it?” She snorted. “Her story's too _stupid_ to be believed. Who’s gonna believe _I’m_ the one who offed him when _she_ was already there?!  She was the _only_ other person in the damn apartment!  Who _else_ could have done it?”

Sam thanked her, and because of the shocks of the evening, stood with her while she gave the police her statement, and escorted her to the car.

“Funny the cops didn't think to arrest her,” Dean said in Sam's ear, startling Sam. He hadn't heard Dean walk over to him. “However, Miss Bedsheet is getting hauled to the station, and probably will have some a nice orange suit to wear shortly.”

“Except that she didn't do it,” Sam said, feeling sick.

“Definitely didn't,” Dean agreed. “However, when the cop interviewing her got done, he slapped the handcuffs on her anyway. 'No way she was in that apartment the whole time and heard nothing,' he said.”

“No _normal_ way,” Sam stressed.

“Yup,” Dean shrugged, looking about as helpless as Sam felt. “She'll probably get released within a day or so. There's no blood on her, or on the sheet, and they probably won't find any blood-covered objects in the apartment. How will they hold her?”

Sam had to nod along with Dean, but knowing the sheet-wrapped woman didn't deserve her current treatment was grating.

They headed back out to their hotel room, and they stopped along the way to buy some booze. Arizona seemed to have alcohol in every single store, and Sam needed the help getting to sleep tonight.

“We can probably get real tequila here,” Dean said thoughtfully, while they stood choosing their bottles in the booze aisle. “We're not far from the border. Maybe the stuff they sell here's somehow better?”

Sam just shrugged and went along with Dean's choices for the night. They were right across the road from a major grocery chain; it wasn't like they'd have to go far if they got a craving for something specific.

It didn't take more than one shot for Sam to finally feel sleepy again, even after the day’s events. For once, he fell asleep on his back, and Dean wasn’t the last thing he saw before sleep claimed him.

He paid for it in his dreams. Falling asleep looking at Dean had always comforted Sam on some level, making it easier for him to rest without nightmares or temptations. Tonight, both tormented him.

Images of Dean danced through his mind. Without ever having wanted it, Sam saw Dean in Hell, wrapped in chains, sliced bloody, rivulets flowing down his naked form. Dean was screaming, looking up with blinded eyes, mouth open, teeth broken and cracked. Dean was torturing victims on the rack, eyes dead, lips curved in a joyless smile. Dean writhed while being cut apart as something kept his arms and legs spread akimbo, revealing every single one of the secrets Sam knew by sight.

Dean laughed in the sunlight. The amber glow of the beer bottle he held reflected in his eyes.   _“Come on, Sammy,”_ his voice whispered in Sam's mind.   _“Drink with me. It's a gorgeous day.”_

Dean fought a vampire, eyes focused, intent on winning, no thought for anything. His body moved on its own; Dean fighting was beautiful. He blocked with a forearm, then used his elbow to crush the monster's larynx. It was followed by a sweep of a long knife in Dean's other hand, taking the head off before it could heal enough to even be able to release a scream. Dean was a ripple on the earth, a seamless flow of silk in the air, and if Sam were awake, he would not be nearly as poetic, but he knew he was dreaming.

When he woke up, he had dried tears on his face and he wanted to get run over by a truck.   

Sam hated this case now. Not because of the deaths, or the strangeness of the facts they had dug up before arriving, or even the weather.

It had to be the fucking people.

Sam had been to what he modestly considered to be more than his fair share of the United States, but he never recalled coming to a town as colorless as this place. People seemed to walk around in a state of perpetual confusion. There was no one out walking on the streets for longer than a few minutes. Houses were springing up left and right, but there wasn't an indication that those homes were being bought.

The entire impression he got of this city was that it was a eulogy to a dead man still walking.

Dealing with the local cops first thing in the morning wasn't helping his opinion, and wouldn’t have even if he hadn't already woken in a bad mood. He was sick of their incompetence (the few exceptions only made it worse), their mishandling of data, and their even worse treatment of potential witnesses. The realization that they'd held the sheet-clad woman overnight, even though all the proof pointed to her being innocent, infuriated him completely.

Without another word, he stormed out of the police building and waited for Dean by the car, not giving a single fuck about how hot it was outside. _Anything_ was better than in there.

\---()()---

Sam had never told Dean this, and it wouldn't have mattered if he did, but whenever Dean slept with someone in whatever town they were in, Sam tried to seek out the woman and sleep with her too.

Dean was a gentleman, Sam knew. He would have made sure the woman in question knew it was a one-night stand, to prevent hurt feelings. He'd seen more than one woman passionately kiss Dean goodbye on her front stoop, hair in a crazy tangle of sex-drunk fumbling and clothes halfway off her body. Dean had always sauntered away from the woman with a grin and a wink, whistling or humming some tune until he was out of her sight.

Sam remembered the first time he'd seen Dean turn a corner, right after leaving some woman's house. The change in Dean’s facial expression at that time had been incredible. The smile had become this twisted little thing on his face, and the music coming from his mouth had stopped. The sexy stroll had become the hunter’s stalk that Sam knew so well. Within seconds, it hadn’t looked like Dean had come off a night of sex at all. It had looked like he'd been through a fight.

Sam hadn't really cared about what Dean had been thinking, but Sam remembered wanting to know what the woman of the night felt like.

Fresh-faced and sixteen years old, Sam had walked confidently up to the woman's house, knocked on her door, and within fifteen minutes, was rolling in the sheets with her, exploring the marks Dean had left, and breathing in the combined sweat-smell of Dean and this woman.

It had only gotten better when Sam had added himself to the mix. He had made sure to spend a lot of the time with his face buried in her neck or between her breasts. He hadn't wanted to miss a single place Dean might have touched with his tongue.

The best part about it had been that Dean must have fucked her one last time before Sam had seen him leave the house, because she hadn't quite returned to her normal state by the time Sam had pushed himself inside her, her loud enthusiasm spurring him on to harsh thrusts.

He hadn't had to take his time. The woman had liked what he had done to her enough to orgasm within the first few minutes. He had been so worked up by that point he had come as well, thrashing helplessly on top of her.

When he had withdrawn, he’d noted the condom had broken. When he had informed her, she waved away his concern, telling him that she had it covered.

On his way out, the woman a happy wreck behind him, he'd glanced at the trashcan in the room, as he buttoned up his pants. He hadn't seen a tied-off condom in there.

\--()()--

Dean was ready to give up on this case. Sam was acting weirder and weirder, and when he'd woken up that morning, Sam had already been dressed, dark circles under his eyes, looking nearly as bad as he had when Lucifer had been using his head for a playground.

Dean didn't dare make that comparison aloud. He had some smarts, even at the asscrack of dawn.

One of these days, Dean was going to take Sam aside and explain to him as gently as possible that, whatever bullshit he was hiding, he had to _stop._ The insomnia thing had been going on for a while now, and Dean was starting to get worried about how much coffee and shit Sam was drinking to stay even mostly awake.

For now, Dean knew he couldn't call Sam out on it, not if he wanted Sam to keep talking to him during this case. They had missed the funerals, and in a weird stroke of luck, the large building that housed the police department, looking far newer than most of the buildings on the street, was right across the street from the cemetery.

A quick dash across the road (on foot; Dean figured the police could do their part to keep Baby safe), and they were strolling down a gravel-covered driving path. Half-dead, freshly cut grass and inset plaques commemorating the dead were set directly in the earth, instead of traditional tombstones. Some of the sprinklers were going off, even in the middle of the day, and a few of them were doing a better job of watering the pavement than wetting the grass.

Dean glanced to the side, and noticed a young woman sitting near an inset headstone, talking animatedly. Her hair seemed to burn brown in the strong light. There were tears flowing down her face as well, even though she was smiling as she talked to dead air. After seeing her touch the headstone with surprising reverence, Dean realized that the woman was talking to whoever was buried there.

Glancing at Sam, Dean wondered briefly why he’d turned white at the sight of the woman at the grave, but promptly forgot about it when he turned left down the road a bit and saw two fresh mounds of dirt, near each other, that represented the victims of the initial murders.

“At least we don’t have to burn them,” Dean muttered. “The dirt's already packed.”

Sam nodded, looking calmer now, but Dean still wondered why the sight of that woman had frightened him. It wasn't like she was a ghost.

“We'll have to come back later—wait,” Dean said, correcting himself. “What's this?”

“Looks like a fresh grave near here too,” Sam replied, sounding surprised. “They sectioned off this area for the murder victims, right?”

“Yeah, and they don't normally do that, especially with people dying to get in and all,” Dean snarked, not even feeling ashamed at the bad joke. “If we only know about two people who died—”

“—then who's this supposed to be?” Sam finished. “The cops never mentioned this one.”

“The cops don't seem to even need to see our badges to think we're FBI,” Dean pointed out, trying not to wince. He may have spent most of his life dodging cops, but that didn't mean he actually _wanted_ them to be bad at their job. Dean just wanted them to be bad at their jobs when it came to trying to apprehend him and Sam.

“Back to the library,” Sam sighed. “We need to know who this person is.”

“Gail Parson,” a woman's voice said.

Dean jumped and looked toward the source, and to his shock, the woman he'd seen talking to the headstone was standing nearby. She was short, and her legs, barely covered in jean shorts, were pale from lack of sun, but showed a strong olive complexion. The t-shirt she wore was plain blue.

“Excuse me?” Sam asked, and glancing at him, Dean saw that same confusing pallor on his face. What about this woman was so scary, Dean wondered; she didn't even come up to his shoulder.

“The woman there who died,” Jean-Shorts said, pushing a short curl of hair off her forehead. “Her name was Gail Parson. I knew her. She died a few months ago. I was going to come say hi to her, but I had another visit to make.”

The casual allusion to what Dean and Sam had seen earlier made Dean ache for her, even while she clearly wasn't asking for pity.

“How did she die?” Sam asked. Dean would have, but he was starting to feel really confused, even though it was fairly straightforward. This girl just appearing at the exact time they'd needed a lead seemed a little suspicious to him.

“Gail walked in on her girlfriend cheating on her, and the bitch killed her,” the woman said, hooking her thumbs through her belt-loops. The t-shirt bunched under her hands. “I told Gail that Norah was bad news, and she never listened to me.” She paused and took a deep breath, obviously trying to keep herself from crying. “The last words Gail said to me were 'I'll confront her about it.' It's like I killed her myself.” She looked down at the ground, and her shoulders hunched as she hugged herself.

“If she killed her,” Dean said, finally able to talk again, “that means she was probably going to do it anyway. The timing just changed, was all, and you didn't do anything wrong.”

“Was she arrested?” Sam asked gently.

“They caught her a few days later trying to sneak into Mexico with a bag full of coke,” the woman said, and snorted out a laugh. “ _God,_ she was an idiot. She was convicted just last week, which is a fucking miracle if you ask me—”

Dean didn't ask, because he knew. Sam was also silent.

“--and she got killed right after she got to jail, because she was stupid enough to go for a prison guard's neck,” the woman finished. “Gail could really pick them. I just hope she's resting easy, considering everything.”

A horrible, sudden thought occurred to Dean. “Miss, where was Gail killed?”

“I thought you knew, being law enforcement,” she said, sounding confused. “The Catalina Apartments. That's where she lived before all of this went down.”

\--()()--

Sam had learned everything about women from Dean. Dean wished he could have been happier about that.

It should have been Dad taking Sam under his wing, teaching him that women were to be respected, treasured, and, most importantly, treated well. It should have been Dad consoling Sam after the girl he had asked out when he was thirteen had turned him down.

Should have been.

Could have been.

Hadn't.

Dad had never seemed interested in knowing whether either one of his sons had any sexual conquests. Dad had never found out when Dean had lost his virginity, or noticed that Sam had become so secretive after he started growing that even Dean hadn't known if the kid had had sex. The only thing Dad had been concerned about was their physical health, so they could continue being his soldiers instead of his sons.

Dean thought that it sucked that Dad hadn't looked out for their emotional or physical health. Maybe then Dean wouldn't have started—just a little—to hate him.

Dean hadn't been able to really entertain the thought of taking Sammy and getting away from Dad. He had thought about it, (unable to avoid it, not liking their life any more than Sam after the excitement had worn off) but realistically, with him not having a degree, Sammy looking way too young (shooting up like a weed, but still baby-faced), and Dad in control of the only form of transportation they had, he’d been left completely out of options. He and Sam had both become accomplished liars, and there hadn't yet been a car built that Dean couldn't hotwire, but their obvious youth and lack of practical experience living on the grid meant they had effectively been dependent on even the illusion of their Dad being around, just to survive.

Dean had had a plan. He hadn't known much about the world, or how to get by without lying in some way, but he had known that he and Sammy couldn't continue to live like that without serious problems later.

Dean had started saving money. He had taken odd jobs, and even dropped out of high school to try and make more money. He had swept peoples' yards, hustled pool, tried a job at a cafe; anything he could think of that would make him money (that wasn't illegal), he had done it.

One of those odd jobs had been helping out at a start-up craft store, helping wrestle bolts of cloth and other materials into place for the owner, who had injured his back. The man had taught him a few tricks about sewing, in addition to the wage he had paid Dean. Dad had stopped asking if they had needed new clothes after that job had ended, since Dean had become skillful enough to let down hems and patch holes.

Dean, at one point, had completely taken his duffle apart and created a new inner lining for it under the watchful eye of his sewing teacher. He had been careful to structure the fabric so that it looked the same size and shape from the outside. Only someone who really looked, Dean's teacher had told him, would be able to see that it was slightly smaller on the inside. Dean had stored all of his earnings from his jobs in the lining of his bag, sure that Dad would never take the time to find those secret pockets, if he had a reason to in the first place.

Dean had kept a tally of the money he had stored, and a careful eye on how old he and Sam looked like as the years went by. Dean had thought that, as soon as Sam looked legal, both of them would get the hell away from Dad. Hunting life hadn't been something Dean thought they would have done long-term anyway. He had loved Mom so much, and wanted vengeance, but even an idiot could have seen that would kill them all in the end.

When Sam had later thrown his hate of the hunting life in Dad's face and decided to leave for Stanford, Dean had convinced Sam to wait by the car while he'd packed all of Sam’s stuff. That night, Dean had switched the contents of their duffels, knowing that Sam would need all the money he could get.

“Love you, Sammy,” Dean had said, dropping the bag down next to Sam. “I made this bag up special for you. Don't forget to check the lining.”

\--()()--

Dean wasn't trying to be cliche, but he had a bad feeling about this.

Finding out Gail was the first person to die wasn't even the worst part of the case. It was how _no one_ had thought to tell him or Sam about her. He knew no one was going to listen to causes that were unnatural when it came to the other murders, but Gail's murder had had a _human_ cause.

When it came to creating ghosts, Dean couldn't think of an event that was more likely to create one. Vengeful murdered girlfriend was looking more like the cause of death, and Sam agreed with it.

Dean had few occasions to actually be happy about John's lessons, but keeping spare clothes in the trunk was something he was grateful for; the drive back to the hotel, only to have to turn around and go back, would suck.

They had to find a way to kill some time before they came back to burn Gail's bones, so they did some more research at the library, trying to find out more information about Gail's murder. They had wanted to question Little Miss Jean-Shorts further, but after a few minutes, she had gotten a phone call and left, though not without giving them her phone number first. 

The information about Gail's murder was limited, and their witness hadn’t been able to tell them much. Gail had been dating Norah, and had walked in on her cheating with someone else, only to be killed before she could get out. There hadn't been information about who Norah had been cheating with; she’d had never named her lover to the cops or on the stand.  The judge had convicted her for the drug charge and for what seemed truly circumstantial evidence relating to Gail’s murder. The rest was as Jean-Shorts had said; Norah had been killed in self-defense in prison, when she'd gone for a guard's weapon.

Sam had said he thought it was fairly cut-and-dry, but Dean had the feeling that _something_ was missing from the case. It was pretty obvious that local law enforcement had no idea how to be even _remotely_ useful. Jean-Shorts was a source, but it didn't look like she knew enough to be useful in the way they needed, even though she'd clearly wanted to help. The papers were limited in what they were supposed to print, and every single time they had tried to call the landlord, it had gone to voicemail. They would just have to burn the body, stick around, and see if they were right.

They ate dinner at a restaurant called Kneaders, which seemed to specialize in desserts, soups, and sandwiches. Sam was clearly in vegetable heaven with his caprese sandwich and house salad (whatever the hell caprese was). Some of the sounds coming out of Sam's mouth had Dean shifting around in embarrassed discomfort, though no one else in the close-together seating area even seemed to notice. Dean ate his roast beef sandwich quietly and got soup with broccoli in it just to keep Sam quiet about his diet.

Finally, it was dark enough for the police department across the street to look mostly abandoned. Dean had to stop feeling as excited as he was; this was something pretty ballsy to do under the nose of the police. It was definitely _not_ something he wanted to tell Sam.

They took turns changing clothes in the back seat of the Impala after they got to the cemetery. It would have been too risky to change at the restaurant, since their clothes themselves were too conspicuous for the area. Black clothing covered with dirt (the clothes nearly never came out of the trunk, except for the occasional wash) weren't something people around here seemed to wear.

The clothes rubbed against Dean's skin, something he normally found irritating, but today, with the extra adrenaline in his system, it was almost pleasurable, making him think stuff that had no business anywhere _near_ a graveyard. Deep breaths weren't exactly helping, but getting hard right now was _all_ kinds of wrong. Later, he told himself.

Gail's grave was harder to dig up than expected. The dirt was tightly-packed, and Dean felt the sweat turn the dirt on his clothes into mud as he worked. It was sticky and cool, and Dean thought bitterly that it would at least make his skin smoother, without having to resort to beauty products. That was _Sam's_ domain, dammit.

Neither Dean nor Sam talked; they had agreed earlier that it would be too risky to try, since their voices would probably carry in the near-silent air. The last thing they wanted was to have the cops catch them doing this; there would be absolutely no excuse that would get them out of trouble.

Soon enough, they reached the coffin, which turned out to be a simple one. Sam easily picked the lock on the coffin's lid while Dean, for the hundredth time, wondered why that particular tradition had persisted into modern times. Sam flung the lid up, and then they were looking at the body of the deceased, dressed in a simple flowery blouse and khaki slacks, formal makeup eerie on her partially decomposed face. There didn't seem to be any marks visible on her, and Dean shot Sam a questioning look.

Sam pantomimed a knife to the gut, and Dean winced; the cause of death hadn't been in the newspaper, and trying to get hold of a closed case file at the police station had been like pulling teeth.

They doused her body in gasoline, the sharp smell choking in such close quarters, and Dean tensed. They had agreed to basically run as soon as Gail's body was lit on fire. A fire this close to the police department wouldn't go unnoticed for long. Dean clutched the salt, and nodded to Sam, who lit his lighter and nodded back.

Dean threw the salt liberally over Gail's body, wondering briefly why her ghost hadn't shown up to stop them yet. Before he could voice that to Sam, ill-advised though it would be, Sam threw the lighter into the dug-out grave, lighting everything ablaze.

Per their earlier talk, Sam and Dean ran for the car. Dean threw himself into the driver's seat, thankful they had the doors open and waiting, and shoved the key into the ignition just as Sam thumped into the seat beside him. The engine roared to life and they each grabbed their car doors and shut them. Dean threw the gear into drive and they took off, smoke starting to rise behind them in the night.

Dean tried his best to focus on the driving, but adrenaline rushes always made him shaky. Dean took a right out of the cemetery onto Arizona Avenue, a broad stretch of road that didn't seem justified for its size. The light on Arizona and 16th Street was green, so Dean went straight, Motel Six on the right, some closed-down restaurant on the left. A quick glance up revealed an overly made-up platinum blond on a billboard advertising a strip club, paint faded with time.

“We'll have to drive around a lot,” Sam said. Dean heard Sam reach for and then fasten his seatbelt, and hurried to do the same himself. The last thing either of them needed after successfully salting and burning a corpse was to get pulled over for violating the seatbelt law.

“Yeah, I know,” Dean sighed. “We're gonna have to search the ex-girlfriend's apartment too. Can't risk her having left anything of herself behind.”

Sam just nodded. They were remembering everything exactly like they should. Sometimes, even though they'd been doing this all their lives, some simple things seemed to slip through the cracks.

\--()()--

The decision to go to Stanford had been a blessing and a curse.

Sam had never regretted his choice to get the hell away from John as soon as he possibly could. Dean hadn't really wanted to discuss it with him, but once or twice, Sam sometimes got the feeling that Dean felt the same way about John that Sam himself did. It usually happened when Dean was exhausted or three sheets to the wind (Sam didn’t remember when he'd picked up that particular phrase).

Dean had liked to poke gentle fun at him for it, but Sam had taken to studying fiercely every time he had had a free moment. John had started making use of Sam to research cases, since neither he nor Dean had been fond of it (Sam bitterly figured it was because John had never bothered to teach Dean how to research; it was one of the few things _Sam_ had taught _Dean_ , not the other way around) and it was a way to keep Sam out of the loop as much as possible. John had probably figured that, whatever Sam couldn’t see, wouldn't hurt him.

Never mind that Sam had seen his share of dead and dying things on their travels, before and after school, and had patched up John and Dean any number of times. Never mind that Sam had had his arm broken by a ghost-possessed human right before he'd graduated junior high, and had had to attend his congratulatory ceremony with a black eye and a glaring yellow cast. Never mind that he'd seen his Dad mercy-kill a man who had been watching his back during a hunt and burn the body afterward. John had still somehow thought Sam had been innocent in the life and in other ways, no matter what he'd seen.

Sam figured that John being an inattentive father had worked out well for him in the long run.  It meant that whenever John had gone on one of his interminable hunts, always after mouthing platitudes about how family was the only thing Dean and Sam could trust, Sam could get busy betraying that trust by enabling a different future for himself.

Sam had always been curious, and Dean had done his best to indulge Sam's curiosity. Sam had figured out early on that Dean was a lot smarter than he seemed in front of John, and had wondered why Dean had hidden it for a while. It hadn't taken long for Sam to realize that, while John valued Dean's quick reflexes and ability to think on his feet, he hadn't valued Dean's brain nearly as much, so Dean had chosen to hide that part of himself.

It had pissed Sam off. He had poured that frustrated anger into his studying, cramming formulas, history, sciences, and whatever else he could think of into his head, with the sole goal of making sure that he could ace a SAT. Any time he hadn't been studying or researching, he’d spent in a library, trying to learn the knowledge he’d need for the test.

It had nearly made him laugh himself sick when he realized Dean had thought he’d actually _liked_ it there. The only real good things that libraries had going for them, aside from having all the stuff he needed, were the people in there who could talk about subjects to fill in his educational gaps, or the people who were willing to educate him in an entirely different way. Sam had first had sex with a girl in a library, an aide, who had been around his age with brown hair and freckles, not long after the kitsune-Amy incident.

The library had been mostly empty, and Sam hadn't even had time to try and find a horizontal surface before the girl, who he had shared smiles with throughout the day, had tugged him up against her, told him to brace himself, and jumped on him. Lucky for him, she'd been wearing a skirt; having to hold her up while she wriggled on him was harder than it had initially seemed. He had finally stumbled over to a nearby table, told her to be quiet, then laid her on top of it before going for the buckle on his belt. Before she could even tell him to wait, he had pulled a condom out of his wallet ( _“better have it for emergencies, Sammy; I don't need to be an uncle this early,”_ Dean’s voice whispered in his head), put it on, and they had gotten to it.

Sam had somehow made her orgasm twice, skirt twisted above her hips and legs wrapped around him, but he had only been able to get himself off after he had held her hands above her head and told her to be quiet, even though the nearest person had been more than halfway across the building. She had looked at him, winked, and gone with it.

Getting dressed again, they had grinned at each other before she had given him a kiss, thanked him for the good time, and left without a backward glance. Sam had shrugged, used the bathroom in order to get rid of the condom, and gone right back to studying, wondering if he should have asked her for any book recommendations for a long-distance student.

Dean had picked him up later that evening. “Got that glow of accomplishment going for you, Sammy,” he had said, leaning against the door of the Impala with a fond smirk. “Guess you found something really worthwhile in there.”

Sam had opened his mouth, ready to tell Dean that he'd finally had sex with a girl (Sam had figured Dean _wouldn't_ want to know about the various guys he'd fucked), when he had noticed that Dean had a faint bruise on his neck, mouth-shaped and high up enough that the collar of Dean's leather coat barely covered it. Dean had cocked his head at Sam quizzically, calling even more attention to that mark, and something in Sam's gut had uncoiled itself and grumbled. He had known that Dean went out to get laid, but seeing that mark on him had made Sam angrier than he had been in a while.

“Yeah, Dean,” he had said, instead of telling his big brother about the milestone he had broken. “Libraries are great. You should spend more time in them.”


	3. Part Three

The town was quiet at this time of night. Sam kept a wary eye out for actual cop cars driving around, and they did have to pull over once for a fire truck, sirens blazing (and seriously, nearly _twenty minutes_ after they'd set Gail on fire; Sam wondered if they'd _all_ been caught sleeping), but they seemed to have escaped both suspicion and pursuit. Easy sailing, Sam figured.

Next to him, Dean fidgeted, fingers tapping out the rhythm of “Don't Fear The Reaper” against the steering wheel.  Sam had no idea why Dean was so nervous. Normally, being nervous was _his_ job, not Dean's. Dean had said that something had seemed off on this case, but now Sam was starting to feel it too. His skin was prickling like lightning was going to strike, but the sky was completely cloudless, stars huge and bright in the sky.

Nothing was wrong. They had done the research, and everything was taken care of, or would be once Dean stopped trying to lose a tail that _wasn't there_ and got to the apartment complex. Sam tried to tell himself all of those things, but his fingers suddenly were itching to hold a gun, _any_ gun, just to feel some kind of security.

They pulled into a parking lot, giant Hastings sign glowing a dull green on the building's facade, while a CVS pharmacy and a Walgreens store stood across the street from each other, silently competing. Beside him, Dean took a breath. Sam exhaled, his lungs burning, making him wonder how long he'd been holding it.

“We're two minutes from the apartment complex,” Dean said. “We ready?”

Sam nodded, unsure if Dean could see it, but saying he was out loud would have been a lie. They did have to get this over with, no matter what; him being ready was the least of their worries.

“We go in, we search the apartment for anything Gail may have left behind, we get out,” Dean said, trying for firm and calm, but Sam could hear the uncertainty. “Gail's family already packed up her place, so anything she could have attached herself to is probably gonna be at the girlfriend's.”

Sam swallowed. “Right.”

With that, Dean pulled back out of the parking lot, careful to signal and drive correctly, something that would render them inconspicuous. Sam huffed out a quiet laugh at the thought of being _inconspicuous_ while driving a shiny black muscle car through the middle of a small town in a desert.

Two minutes almost to the dot later, they were back at the apartment building, festooned all over with yellow police-tape, and Sam was uneasily reminded of the first vision he had had, in the upstairs corner apartment. He wondered if Jean-Shorts was happier these days, and hoped she'd someday find out she had helped them stop more murders from happening.

A car door slamming brought him abruptly back to the present. Dean had gotten out of the car while Sam had been distracted, and was now waiting for him to do the same. Sam scrabbled with his seat belt, hurrying to catch up with Dean and not look as worried as he suddenly felt.

The ex-girlfriend had had her apartment on the bottom floor of the small complex, near to some dilapidated storage closets and an ancient laundry room, filled with three washers and two dryers. One of the washers was churning sluggishly as it worked. Sam tuned out the background hum as he knelt at the door Dean indicated and got out a set of lockpicks.

Some instinct he didn't understand had him trying the doorknob first, instead of picking it, and the door opened. Sam looked up at Dean (strange to do; he hadn't had to do that for years) and reached for his gun, tucked securely into the waistband of his dirt-encrusted jeans. He saw Dean reach for his own weapon as Sam stood up and cast wary looks around, to be sure no one was watching them.

Dean held up his left hand, folded back everything but his middle and index fingers, and used them to point first at his own eyes, then at Sam's. Sam nodded, and Dean flattened the hand, indicating he wanted silence, and enforced it by holding his index finger to his mouth, lips slightly pursed.

Sam nodded again, took a deep breath, and looked back to Dean. Dean had three fingers up, acting as a timer. Dean lowered one, then another. When Dean had his hand in a fist, Sam turned the knob as silently as he could, and eased the door open, gun held at the ready.

The apartment, dusty from lack of occupancy, was littered with cut ribbons of police tape, which were a strange contrast in the otherwise dark room. Even stranger, Sam heard someone moving around inside, and he immediately signaled Dean for silence. Dean looked confused until he realized that someone was there. Dean gave a short nod and eased the door shut behind him, not closing it completely until the person got loud enough to cover the sound. The wait left Sam jittery, and he tried to calm down.

“Stupid _goddamned_ bitch,” a voice snarled, and Sam was surprised to recognize it as the landlord's, remembering the voicemail message on his phone. “You don't get to stop this, not after everything!”

“It was _your_ actions that got us into this mess,” a voice said. Sam didn't know who was speaking, but it had an echoing quality to it that could only mean it was a ghost. “Now you can get yourself out. _I'm_ not someone they could hurt.” A high-pitched, humorless laugh followed. “I made sure of that.”

“So _close_ ,” the landlord hissed. “Damn _stupid_ cops couldn't give those two FBI agents the fucking _runaround_ I fucking _paid them_ to give—”

That explained the incompetency of the police around here, Sam realized.

“--and they just keep _fucking calling me_ , trying to get into the apartments, and I am fucking _out of excuses!_ You _have_ to ginsu-knife the shit out of them! I don't care how as long as you do it!”

“I can't,” the ghost said.

_“Excuse me?!”_

“You're the one who told me my girlfriend was cheating on me,” the ghost said. “I have to kill people who cheat. I can't hurt people who aren't.”

“You weren't objecting _that_ much when I killed her for walking in on us,” the landlord growled.

Sam and Dean looked at each other, and Sam realized that Dean's feeling that they'd missed something had been right on the money. It _hadn't_ been Gail killing all those people. It had been her jailed lover.

“I _loved_ that bitch, and she _cheated,_ ” Norah wailed, high-pitched and full of despair. Sam felt all the hair on his body stand on end. “What was letting _you_ have me, compared to that?”

Before Sam could stop him, Dean walked further into the apartment, toward the bedroom, and said loudly, “she didn't cheat on you!”

Barely two seconds later, loud thumps announced the arrival of the man who had to be the landlord; he was a tall man, though shorter than Dean, with salt-and-pepper hair and a face that had devolved from chiseled to craggy. The ghost was easier to make out in the dim lighting, since she had a sickly green-silver glow. She had very long hair that floated around her one second, then flared like a cobra's the next. Her face was oddly delicate, and Sam, for a fleeting second, thought she didn't look like a murderer before he snapped himself out of it. He knew damn well that murderers came in all shapes and sizes.

“Tell me,” the ghost said angrily, her voice echoing off the walls. “How could you possibly know that my Gail wasn't cheating on me with that _curly-haired bitch?!_ ”

“Because that ‘curly-haired bitch’ the one who told us about you,” Sam said, trying to keep her from coming after them. “We saw her at the cemetery—”

“Where Gail's buried?” Norah interrupted.

“She was paying her respects,” Dean interjected. “She said she tried to warn Gail about you—”

 _“I loved her!”_ The ghost shrieked, a sudden wind blowing from everywhere at once. The landlord, despite the fact that he had been knowingly talking to a ghost, looked suddenly terrified.

Dean held up his hands. “No one's denying that,” he said, trying for the calm tone Sam had heard soothe so many people. “But Gail's friend, the curly-haired girl, wasn't with her like that.”

“Blah, blah, blah,” the landlord drawled, his sarcasm heavy. “Explain why I should be giving a _shit_ about that dead bitch? She almost ruined everything!”

“Yeah?” Sam asked. “What did she ruin?”

“Damn bitch _knew_ I was fucking her girlfriend,” the older man said, running a shaking hand through his hair. “She came after me, and I knew I had to do something about her fast—”

“--so you made sure she'd walk in on you two, and then you killed her?” Sam asked, feeling sick.

“She didn't cheat on me?” Norah asked, sounding lost.

“Wait, _you_ were the one who killed her?” Dean demanded. Sam figured he hadn't heard that part.

“Oh, _shut the fuck up_ , all of you,” the landlord spat, pulling at a necklace he wore. “Fucking _kill_ them already, you worthless bitch!”

The ghost drew herself up. “No.”

“No?” The landlord repeated incredulously.

“No,” Norah agreed. “Neither of them have been unfaithful, in word or deed, to the one they hold in their hearts.”

“And you can just _tell,_ ” the landlord said sarcastically.

“Of course,” Norah stated. “You can control me with that _trinket”_ —she sneered—“but killing outside of the parameters you set _isn't_ something you can compel me to do.”

Sam could catch a clue, especially when it was about as subtle as a brick to the head. He went straight for the landlord, who opened his mouth to scream even as he fumbled at the back of his pants for something Sam figured was a gun. He heard Dean moving behind him, but the majority of his attention was focused on getting the pendant off the landlord's neck.

Sam's fingers closed around it, and his other hand clenched into a fist as he yanked. The chain snapped, and Sam decked the landlord in the face.

The ghost shrieked again, impossibly high, making Sam's eyes tear up and his head throb. Dimly, through the pain, he wondered why the neighbors hadn't called the cops yet due to the noise, before it stopped as suddenly as it started.

When Sam managed to fight his way back from near-unconsciousness, he saw the ghost had the landlord pinned to the ground, Dean holding his arms above his head.  The ghost arched her back in a grotesque parody of enjoyment, before she snapped herself into a more upright position.

“You,” Norah said, all the emotion drained from her voice, “have been unfaithful.”

The landlord opened his mouth, blood trickling down the corner to drip onto his chin, but the ghost struck before he could even cry out for help. Her hand, fingers closely held together, plunged into his chest with a sickening crunch. Blood flew up from the force of the impact, and horrifyingly, the ghost was transparent enough for Sam to see the blood bubbling around her hand, and some of the torn vessels inside the landlord's chest cavity.

With a careless yank, the landlord's sternum and heart were pulled from his chest, and the ghost held it up to his rapidly-fading gaze. As the landlord's eyes closed for the last time, the ghost squeezed the faintly-beating heart, letting blood drip down onto his face.

Through the transparency of the ghost, Sam could see that Dean looked as green as Sam himself felt.

“You have my contract,” Norah said tonelessly. “Whatever you want to do to me, it won't be worse than what's already happened.”

“We're just going to send you where you need to go,” Dean said carefully.

“The apartment,” the ghost said, apropos of nothing.

“What?” Sam asked, confused by the abrupt topic change.

“Burn the apartment,” Norah said. “No one else in this place is home—”

That explained why no one had called the cops on them, Sam thought.

“--and the few people here are moving out, thanks to this guy,” she concluded. “He was trying to sell the property since it was always in the red. He had a buyer, but since some relative of his had more shares in the place, he couldn't do anything unless he proved the place wasn't worth the trouble. It was easy for him, since he lived here too.” She floated off the body of the landlord, and Sam quickly followed her with his eyes. He may have seen plenty of dead bodies, but he didn't need to see more than he already had.

“You burn this place,” Norah continued, “then no one can make a contract with him the way he did with me.”

Sam nodded, and Dean stood up and walked over to her. “You sure this is what you wanna do?” He asked her quietly. “You have to know where you may be going.”

Sam winced at the reminder.

“I deserve it, if I do,” the ghost said, spreading her arms helplessly. One hand, still somehow corporeal, dripped with blood. “I hurt Gail, and nothing's worse than that. I can't even apologize to her, since she's dead, and I might not be able to see her.”

“Look,” Sam tried, but Norah kept talking.

“I watched him kill her,” she whispered, something about her tone making Sam wish she had screamed. It would have been less painful. “Whatever's coming to me, _I fucking deserve it._  Just do whatever you came here to do.” Black tears started slowly sliding down her cheeks.

Dean nodded gently and took the pendant from Sam. The feeling of Dean's fingers touching his made Sam suddenly half-hard, even though the last thing he felt was aroused. He figured it must have been the adrenaline.

“You sure?” Dean asked again.

The ghost nodded, still silently crying.

Without further questions, Sam went to the bedroom to start setting a fire. He figured, given the dead asshole's bribes to the cops, that it'd be a long while until anyone came to put out the blaze. By that point, everything would probably have gone up in flames. Sam also admitted to himself that he didn't want to watch Dean kill her for the final time.

He put some clothes on the bed, dusty with disuse, and lit a piece of cloth with his lighter before tossing it onto the pile. Beds were nice and flammable, Sam knew, and once it caught fire, the apartment would go up with it.

Just as the fire started to crackle, warming up the room even more, Dean appeared, an open bottle of alcohol held between the heels of his hands. “This should really get it going,” Dean said simply, dumping it onto the mattress. Sam saw that it was some cheap-looking flavored vodka, and he smelled the fruity bite of it in the air. The fire licked over the booze-soaked clothes and roared up higher.

Dean leaned against Sam for a moment, and a weird thrum of awareness went through Sam. He willed it away, not only because it was inappropriate, but because the feeling was wrong in some fundamental way he couldn't pin down.

“Time to hit the landlord's place,” Dean said, sounding subdued. “Even if that asshole managed to help us by keeping local law enforcement off our asses, we shouldn't hang around.”

Sam silently agreed with him, suddenly worn out by the day's events. They made their way out of the bedroom and out through the front door. Sam suddenly smelled cooking meat, and perversely, his stomach started rumbling with hunger even as his nausea rose up, threatening to choke him. He increased his walking speed, and noted Dean was right on his heels the whole way out.

They didn't bother making the break-in to the landlord's place look like anything other than what it was. They dumped out all the alcohol (far more expensive than someone in his line of work should have been able to afford, Sam noted) and lit rags, tossing them into the puddles of booze on the floor. Fire blazing, Sam and Dean left for the car, got in, and drove across the street to the old folk's home across the street, waiting to ensure the building went up in flames.

Nearly half an hour later, people were screaming in the street, calling the fire department on their phones, and trying to throw water on the burning wreck that was the apartment complex. Fire engines didn't arrive until another twenty minutes had passed.

“Good thing there weren't any pets in the complex,” Dean murmured, something sounding off in his voice. “They'd have all died because of that jackass.”

Sam grunted in agreement, but kept his eyes on the building. Just then, the fire changed color briefly, going from orange to white, before fading back into orange.

“Think we're good now,” Dean stated, starting the Impala. “I'm sick of this damn case. Glad it's over.”

“Yeah,” Sam managed. The hum of interest in his body was starting to increase. Sitting in this car, surrounded by the smell of them, blood, gun oil, dirt, and sweat, was doing things to him that he usually kept under tighter control.

“Let's go,” he heard Dean say, but couldn't bring himself to respond. The part of him that was always frustrated, always hungry, was waking up and scratching at his brain.

The drive back was a blur. Sam was too busy trying to figure out what was going on inside himself to pay attention, so when they stopped, it startled him.

“I need a drink,” Dean said, shutting off the car. “I need lots of drinks.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “I'm pretty thirsty.”

There was a bar a few blocks down the road, but from the look on Dean's face, Sam knew he didn't just want a _few_ drinks; he wanted to get shitfaced. They walked to the Applebee's instead, located in the same parking lot as the hotel, and sharing space with a dollar store and a small business center, still wearing the dirt-stained clothes. Sam couldn't even manage to suggest they go up to the room and change. Something dangerous was in Dean's stride tonight, and it told Sam that, whatever Dean's plans were, he wasn't going to take no for an answer.

\---()()---

Dean hadn't considered it a talent, but he had been able to brainwash himself into following Dad's orders as blindly as Dad wanted about a year after Sam had left for Stanford. There had been no other real way to keep himself from doing something like what Sam had done. Sam had been able to rip himself away from everything he knew, and from the blind pursuit of revenge, without anyone helping him.

Dean hadn't been that strong without an outside motivator.  After Sam had left, possibilities had up and left with him, almost like a taunt.  He had had dreams of Sam at night, shaking his head and telling him to get up on his own two feet and follow him. _“Come on, Dean,”_ dream-Sammy had said, tossing his stupidly-long hair as he curled up against Dean's side, somehow smaller than he had been (which told Dean it was a dream; Sam had outgrown him at fifteen). _“If I can do it, you can. You've always been strong. For me, Dean? You were going to do it for me; why can't you do it for you?”_

Sleep deprivation had been easier to take than the constant mockery of the dreams.

It had been better to bury the part of him that thought long thoughts in the night,, and hope for something to kill him on a hunt, than try and do what Sam had done. He had had to convince himself that Sam had hated him as much as he had obviously hated John, just to be able to sleep at night. The gut-wrenching pain had been somehow easier to bear than the constant mockery his own mind made of his weakness, since he had known he could heal himself of it.

Gradually, almost like a blessing from the God Dean had never believed in, John (somewhere along the way, John had stopped being “dad”) had started going on solo hunts more often, contacting Dean less and less. He had even given the Impala to Dean, and had it been given several years earlier, things would have been so very different, maybe even happier, and Dean wouldn't have had to put up with John at all just so he could take care of Sammy… but he had to cut those thoughts off before he choked on their bitterness.

It had given Dean the freedom he had wanted for himself and Sam, back when things were simpler and before Dean's opportunities had disappeared like rain in a desert.

When Dean had dropped Sam off at the bus station, Dean had told Sam that he probably wouldn't be able to contact him for a while. “With you gone,” Dean had said with an eye-roll, “Dad'll keep an even closer eye on me. I won't get away from him for long enough to shower or even pee, much less try and talk to you.”

“Do what you have to, Dean,” Sam had said, hugging him close. “Just, if you drive through, either come see me or keep going. No in-betweens, okay?”

“You got it, Sam,” Dean had said, gripping him tightly. “Just kick some ass out there, okay, college-boy?”

“I know, Dean,” Sam had replied softly. He had tucked his face into Dean's neck, and his lips had brushed skin as he had talked, a maddening tickle that had warmed Dean's grief-soured stomach. “When you're ready, let it happen, okay? I'm not Dad. I won't force you to do something you don't want.”

Dean had hated that dream the most, because of all the dreams he had had, parading his failure to tear himself away in front of him, that one had actually happened. The truth had always been hardest for Dean to bear, so he had started lying to himself.

Once out of John's immediate orbit, Dean had started to think more like himself. He had slept better, eaten better, and even started to drink less ( _instead of like John_ , a corner of his mind whispered). He had had time to think about what he wanted to do, in between saving people. After the fallout with Cassie, he had had even more time to think, since John, unlike most dads with broken-hearted sons, had gotten away from him as soon as the job had been done without even a “there'll be more fish in the sea.”

Dean hadn't been tempted by the whisky bottle John had left behind. Instead, he had taken the duffle bag that had been Sam's and given it the same treatment that he had done to his own, while he was still in town. He had had to avoid Cassie the entire time, but after a week, he had once again had a duffle with a secret lining, waiting to be stuffed full of some form of salvation.

In return for letting Dean use her store and some materials for his project, the fabric-store owner, a true alcohol connoisseur, had gotten the full bottle of whisky. “A Benrinnes 23 year old whiskey. God, you realize they don't even make this anymore?” She had asked Dean, full of awe as she had cradled the bottle. The amber fluid had glowed in the skylight-lit store, beautiful color of it bouncing off the white walls. It had made Dean sick to look at it. “I could fill your car with cloth and give you a brand-new sewing machine, and I'd still come out on top!”

“I don't need any of those things, though,” Dean had said calmly, grateful as ever that Cassie hadn't had a single handcraft-loving bone in her body, and no reason to come within a mile of the store. “You gave me a better sewing kit than the one I had before, and enough material for me to get my bag to the specs I wanted. This is equal exchange.” He had patted her shoulder, almost amused at the way she couldn't seem to tear her gaze away from the bottle. “I've got everything I need now.”

“You were utterly _wasted_ on that reporter,” the store-owner had told him, managing to tear her gaze away from the whisky. “Thank you again, and I wish you luck.”

“Thank you, ma'am,” Dean had replied, blinking away tears and picking up his re-made bag. “You can bet that I'll be sending anyone who needs it right to your doorstep.” Dean had kept his word. 

After he had gotten out of there, he had known he had to really work on regaining the part of him that wasn't John's good soldier, bound to him by blood. Cassie leaving him had shaken something loose within him, the voice he had nearly drowned out with alcohol and caffeine, and that voice had screamed at him that something had to change.

He had finally been ready.

John had chosen that time to go missing.

\---()()---

The waitress at the restaurant didn't look at them twice, just got them to a table in the bar area, where Dean proceeded to order four tequila shots and a pitcher of beer. Sam ordered nachos and water.

When the shots arrived, Dean shoved one of them at Sam and drowned the other three in rapid succession. Sam waited until the waitress got back with the beer to push it back toward Dean, while Dean ordered more shots.

Sam ended up eating most of the nachos; Dean was too intent on getting drunk. He did manage to get some food into Dean's mouth, mostly when Dean was pausing to stare at the pitcher of beer like it was the Holy Grail.

“God, Sam,” he said at one point. “There really wasn't any fuckin' justice here.”

“Is there ever?” Sam asked carefully, cupping his beer mug. “I mean, we do it to help the living, not the dead.”

“Jus' sucks,” Dean slurred. “Dead woman never even got an apol—apoloa—got told it wasn't her fault.”

Sam took one of the tequila shots, against his better judgement, and drank it. The sour-sweet burn of it down his throat was almost welcome.

“Few people get justice when bad shit happens to them, or makes them do bad shit,” Sam said. Without meaning to, he said “like Dad” before he could stop himself.

For a second, hardly daring to breathe, Sam wondered if he was about to get punched, when Dean lifted his head off his hands to look him straight in the eye. Dean's eyes, normally clear and green, were clouded by pain and booze. Instead of going on a self-righteous spiel about how John had done his best with what he had, Dean nodded and mumbled, “yeah, like Dad.”

Both of them reached for a shot, Sam hoping to get the bitter taste of familial failure out of his mouth.

Sam was a bit tipsy, but Dean was plastered enough to not put up a fight when Sam partially hoisted him over a shoulder and paid the bill. Getting Dean's dead weight (Sam's mind shied away from the negative association) back to the hotel mostly sobered him up, and Dean even managed to take over walking on his own, although he was still leaning against Sam for most of it.

The elevator ride was quiet, mostly because Sam was trying to avoid the amused looks some of the people with them were giving him and Dean. If Dean was even a bit more sober, Sam would have taken the stairs. Their floor finally arrived, and he hauled Dean out, trying to pretend he hadn't heard someone giggling behind him.

When they got to their room, Sam propped Dean up against the wall while he dug in his wallet for the key card. He heard Dean move, but he wasn't going to try catching someone nearly his own size; Dean would just have to land on the floor. The itch in his mind was back, whispering that Dean was vulnerable, warm, and comfortable, and he should reach out and take what was there. Dean would never know and he'd be fine, Sam's hindbrain murmured.

Sam suddenly felt Dean's arms wrap around him from behind, nearly scaring him out of his own skin. Dean held him closely and muttered, “h'ry the hell up, S'm.”

Sam realized then that Dean was plastered against his back, hips pushed against Sam's ass. Dean was also hard, Sam discovered, and his knees went weak. He never thought he'd get to feel it, didn't know what to do with himself now that he knew what it felt like. _The last and only way he hasn't been yours_ , the itch said, raking its claws down his back. It had the be the reason why Sam shivered.

“H'ry,” Dean mumbled again, arms sliding down from Sam's waist to Sam's hips. “Wanna go in.”

This time, Sam couldn't pretend that he shivered because of some phantom sensation.

Dean rubbed his hips against Sam's ass and let out a sigh that faded into a pleased rumble. Sam's hands started to shake, but he managed to get the door open and pull Dean in with him. Instead of letting him go once they were inside, Dean held on tighter. Worse, he started trying to undo Sam's pants.

Sam exhaled loudly and his hands dropped to stop Dean from what he was doing, but Dean took his left hand and pulled it down and around his back; not enough to hurt, but enough to immobilize him. He suddenly felt cold when Dean leaned away, then he flushed when Dean unmistakably started sucking on his fingers.

Sam needed to say no. He knew he did. Dean, falling-down drunk or blackout drunk, would still stop as soon as he heard a 'no.' Sam had seen it happen before, and Dean had stopped, apologized, and backed off. One word could keep Dean from crossing the line Sam had been smashing in his mind for years. One word, and it would be the end of it. One word could keep Sam on the right side of fraternal love, and keep Dean from the guilt he kept close to his heart for everything, from wanting to act like a kid when he was one, to torturing souls in Hell.

Sam said nothing. Instead, he pushed his ass against Dean's crotch and let out a throaty groan. Fuck it; he didn't ask for much, and he would deal with whatever came next.

He wanted, and for once, he took what he wanted.

\--()()--

Dean had never admitted it to anyone, had barely been able to admit it to himself, but he had been grateful when John had gone missing. Utterly, completely, totally grateful. He hadn't wanted his father to be dead, but the palpable absence of John, somehow present in Dean's everyday life through the newfangled electronic leash (cell phone) that John had insisted upon once they had become readily available, was a relief.

Dean had known it was wrong to be happy about it. He hadn't been able to help how he felt, but he knew what his duty would have told him to do. No matter Dean's own personal feelings about John, he owed it to him as a son to at least try and find him.

Dean had decided to search on his own for a week. That week had been the most peaceful and the most torturous time of his life. The peace in his heart had been constantly arguing with the turmoil in his head about what he should have felt about John, but simply hadn't. He had followed all the leads faithfully, and had made sure to do the legwork properly, despite his mixed feelings. That voice in his head, the one that had screamed about familial duty and being a good soldier (sounding suspiciously like John, in his face, at his back, _take care of your family boy, while I leave you in the rear-view_ ) had been losing rapidly to his long-buried desires to be free and with Sam.

John had been letting Dean off on an increasingly longer leash lately, since Dean had willingly accepted the cell phone John had bought him. Dean, in subtle retaliation at the implication that he needed to be tracked, had kept the phone on vibrate. It hadn't helped Dean feel less connected to John, but it had let him forget about the silent, judging presence standing over his shoulder for a while, in increasingly long periods of time.

Dean hadn't even bothered using the phone to contact John, since the two times he had tried ended almost as soon as they had begun. John, despite his gruff “call me anytime you need on that thing, boy,” had never been available to talk. The second time, the phone had picked up, and Dean had heard the sounds of a baseball game in the background for a split second before John had hung up.

John had obviously had better things to do than talk to his eldest son, and Dean, unexpectedly, realized he had been fine with that. John had decided to finally cut loose the only son he had cared to acknowledge (John, in a drunken haze shortly after Sam had left, had actually ordered Dean to not mention his younger brother) with a cell phone as a nod to paternal responsibility, and Dean had, slowly but surely, begun to enjoy the extra time to himself, to rediscover his wants and needs.

Then John, who had managed to make Dean aware through other people (always through other people; why had John even bothered programming his number into Dean's phone, if John was never going to call?) of his continued presence among the living, completely cut off all contact.

It had felt like nectar from heaven.

Days had gone by in bliss, before that voice in his head, that last bastion of whatever familial feelings Dean had left toward John, had finally reared its head and screamed at him that, if he just let John disappear without even an attempt to find him, he was a bigger monster than the demon who had murdered his mother.

After he had broken into Sam's house (harder to break into than the average bank; he had known Sam had kept up with his lessons) and fought with his brother, he had hoped his utter reluctance to find John, and his distaste at the idea of even having to try, hadn't shown in his voice when he had said, “Dad's on a hunting trip. I haven't heard from him in a few days.”

\---()()---

Sam was in the bathroom, doing whatever, and Dean finally sat up and took stock of the situation. He was covered in sweat, dirt, and lube. He wasn't covered in jizz, so he supposed that was a plus, but it didn’t make remembering how he’d fucked Sam into oblivion last night any better.

Why had Sam let him do that? Sam could have stopped him easily; he had been so drunk that any attempt at self-defense would have been laughable at best. Instead he'd—and they had—

Dean buried his face in his hands, and a split second later yanked them away in disgust. He remembered having Sam spread for him, three fingers buried in him while Sam writhed and pushed onto them, moaning like it was the best thing he'd ever felt. Those fingers had kept Sam open while Dean had slid inside with an ease that had shocked him… wait.

Sam had known what to do during it, Dean realized; he had relaxed while Dean had done the… stuff. How had Sam known to do that, unless… it hit Dean. Sam had been with men before. The sudden revelation had Dean scrubbing his face with his left hand ( _the hand that had wrapped around Sam's cock, had spread the warm, silky precome over the impossibly soft skin, had felt Sam lose it and soak his fist_ ) and trying to reconcile this new knowledge with the brother he'd grown up with, the man he was responsible for, even now. The man who, as a boy, had tried to spend as much time away from home ( _from John_ , his brain said) as possible.

Dean had only known what Sam had told him. Sam had kept the secret of Stanford until John had been seized with a sudden curiosity and had violated the only real privacy any of them had had, by going through Sam's (now Dean's) duffle. If Sam could have hidden that from Dean, Sam must have been capable of hiding other things.

He got up while Sam was in the bathroom, grabbed his gun, and sat down with it in front of him. Morally, what he and Sam did every day was wrong. Was this a sign that it was finally time to end it? He wasn't feeling guilty over violating one of the most serious human taboos. Sex with Sam, for fuck's sake, was _wrong._ It was filthy and degrading and it was hard on the sanity, knowing he was capable of it, and had done it.

Sam came out of the bathroom, towel wrapped around his waist, and Dean, with a sickening certainty, _knew_ he and Sam were going to have sex again. It wasn’t that Sam made him hard, but knowing how much pleasure there was in fucking him, not having to be as careful as he was with other lovers (though he'd have been careful anyway; he wasn't a sadist), what was one more, or many more times? He had already been in Hell. Getting sent back there for incest was the _least_ of his worries.

“Dean?” Sam asked softly, seeing the gun on the bed. His body language said he was calm, and that Sam wasn't about to go lunging for Dean. Dean didn't trust it, looking at Sam with new eyes. Sam looked like he always had, plus some bite marks (Dean knew he'd put them there). Dean remembered a time when Sam had been a teenager, and had come home with bite marks almost like these. Dean had clapped him on the back and commented that the girl Sam had been with must have been a real tiger. Sam had chuckled and blushed, but only now did Dean realize that Sam hadn't agreed with him.

“How long?” Dean asked. Sam understood immediately. Dean could see some doubt and self-loathing in his eyes.

“All our lives, I guess,” Sam said, sitting on the bed. “Just always felt it.” Sam gave him a hard glance. “I _know_ it’s morally disgusting, and I’m also not ashamed of it, so don't even _try_ feeding me that bullshit.”

Dean shrugged and didn't reply. He wasn't sure what to say in response to Sam's words, but he needed the information. Dean wasn't quite sure when the self-recrimination was supposed to kick in; he was more weirded out by the fact that he'd fucked a guy than that Sam was the guy he'd fucked. He thought deliberately that he had fucked Sam, tried to drive home that it was _real_ and had _happened_ , and nothing. He felt normal, if hungover, sore, and tired. Looking at Sam, Dean just saw the baby he'd carried out of the burning house, the teenager he'd kept from attacking John, and the adult who was his hunting partner.

If he had slept with him, wasn't he supposed to find him attractive? He'd never really given a damn what Sam looked like, as long as he was alive and with Dean.

“What do we do now?” Dean asked quietly. “I can't forget what happened.”

“Then don't,” Sam said, reaching over the gun to grasp Dean's hand (the one that'd been inside Sam, keeping him ready to take a cock, Dean's cock) and held it tightly. “Let's just do whatever feels right to us.”

Dean heard it in Sam's voice then, something that sounded happy, almost triumphant. Whatever Sam was saying to him was true, Dean figured; Sam had no reason to lie. Except, he thought, Sam had no reason to lie to him when he was getting everything he wanted. Dean kept his face carefully neutral, and picked up the gun in his left hand, hearing Sam take a deep breath but not pull away ( _“might have to kill your baby brother someday, Dean; you watch out now,”_ John's voice said in his head).

Dean just put the gun on the nightstand between their beds.

“Sure, Sam,” Dean said, while thinking he could kill them both later, if this sickness got out of hand, and that he would never tell Sam what he had decided in that moment. “We'll just do what feels right.”

\--()()--

It was supremely ironic that the only thing that had managed to kill the sick feelings in Sam toward Dean was Jessica's death.

Sam had loved Jess like he had loved no one else, but not like he had loved Dean. No one had ever come close to inspiring the same feelings inside him that Dean did, but he had definitely felt love for Jess. Having her gone was an awful wound, and like a kid with loose tooth, Sam had continuously poked at his loss, because while he was grieving for Jess, Sam hadn't been able to feel desire for Dean.

The time after her death was the only time Sam had managed to have a truly brotherly relationship with Dean. He had finally built the relationship with Dean that he should have had and had desperately wanted ever since he had realized his desire for Dean was wrong.

He had been able to joke with Dean, touch Dean, without feeling a sick thrill or a twisted curl of lust. Sam had been able, for the first time since puberty, to see Dean undressed, or barely dressed, and feel nothing. Being near Dean hadn't felt like Sam was coming apart at the seams with the desire to get closer.

It had been wonderful. It had also been horrible.

Loving Dean in some form or another had been the cornerstone of Sam's life, purity and filth tangled up inside him until Sam hadn't been able to tell the difference. To suddenly not desire Dean anymore almost made Sam feel like a bigger chunk of himself had died with Jess than he had previously thought. Sam had been unable to look at Dean as anything other than family, and it had made him take a closer look at himself than was strictly comfortable.

Sam had had to wonder how much of his desire to have Dean to himself in every way was due to his isolation from John, his lack of socialization, or just the way he had to grow up. None of his answers had been satisfactory. To be able to look at Dean without that sick curl of desire in his gut, the almost Pavlovian response of his dick, somehow made him feel like less of a man. After nearly a year, Sam had to finally make his peace with Jess's death. He had loved her, but he hadn't been able to stand feeling like a shell of a man.

He had dealt with it responsibly enough in the traditional way (whiskey and beer, golden and vile, to the point of unconsciousness, of thoughtlessness), until Dean had thought it would be a great idea to throw him headfirst at a beautiful… werewolf.

Sam could have laughed at the irony of Dean putting a woman in his way now, when his teenage years had been filled with Dean keeping him away from them. There had been that lovely librarian, but being with her had felt like an act, to keep Dean from being too suspicious.

Then there had been Madison, who in another life might have been perfect for him. She had reminded him a lot of Jess; the devil-may-care attitude, the sweetness, the independence. He had almost felt like he had been able to love her, even before he had gotten to share her bed.

The revelation that there had been no cure for lycanthropy had almost been a relief. Sam had had no idea what he would have done if she had been cured. He had had Dean's approval, and she had clearly liked him. Perhaps they would have stayed in that town, hunting with it as a home base, and he would have wrapped himself around Madison while they slept, like he had done with Jess.

Madison had asked her to end it. Out of respect for her, he had agreed.

Dean had been kind, and turned away. Sam had felt it was better that way as he had walked into the bedroom with Madison for the last time. He hadn't wanted Dean to be a party to Madison's last moments.

“It was never really me,” Madison had said quietly. “It was him, wasn't it.” Sam hadn't missed the lack of a question in her voice.

“I might have been able,” he had replied, equally softly. “I am able. I know I'm sick. I wish...”

“Things are what they are,” she had declared firmly. “Kiss me, then do it. I won't hurt anyone else.”

“Madison,” Sam had murmured, tearing up, feeling something warm and hateful crawling through him as he had looked at her.

“Luck, Sam,” she had whispered, looking up at him, trembling.

He had kissed her mouth, had kept it chaste. He had wanted to etch her lips into his skin, keep her with him somehow. He hadn't understood.

She had turned to face away from him when the kiss ended, and her fists had clenched at her sides. Small droplets of blood from her nails digging into her palms had freckled her olive-toned skin, and some had dripped onto the floor.

Sam had raised the gun, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger. He hadn't missed. At point-blank range, he hadn't been _able_ to miss. He had kept his eyes open the entire time, had made sure to burn into his head the way Madison had looked after he had killed her, the way her hair fell around what was left of her head, almost like a silken mockery of a halo.

He had realized, only after she was cold and dead on the floor, before he had walked out to meet Dean, that he had loved her after all.

It had all been Dean's fault. If Dean hadn't tried harder to seduce Madison for himself, Sam wouldn't have loved her. Sam would have kept feeling nothing. Sam wouldn't have hurt another innocent person. It would have only hurt Sam.

Sam had looked into Dean's eyes, filled with unshed tears for him, and had felt the jolt of desire that had been missing from his life since Jess had died.

Madison's blood hadn't even dried on the walls.

\---()()---

John had died. Dad had died. A nightmare had ended, and a new nightmare had begun.

Dean hadn't expected to _mourn_ the bastard. Not after all the shit John had talked about responsibility, and family, and everything else he had used to keep a leash on Dean until he had voluntarily dropped it himself. Not after having had to kill something before his balls had even dropped. Not after having had to scrimp and pinch to provide food and clothes for Sam, which had often left Dean hungry and cold, all before Dean had even become a teenager.

John hadn't been anything like what Dean had seen in other fathers. Dean had even hated him. He hadn't been able to reconcile what he felt to the reality of John's existence, and what it meant now that John had died.

In all the small towns Dean had gone through in his life, he had seen real fathers doting on their children. Kids had laughed and played with their dads, their dads smiling and coaching them carefully through life, keeping them safe. Dean had seen those same fathers cradle kids close to their chests, had seen them look happy and content, like nothing else would have ever been as wonderful as that moment.

John had hugged Dean only a handful of times before he had died. Manly clasps on the shoulder between equals had never been an adequate substitute, and Dean had long outgrown the age where he could have gone up to his father and asked to be held.

John had left an unholy mess behind him. Dean had snorted at the irony of that phrase, but even that fleeting emotion had left him a broken mess, capable only of incredible rage. John had left him by himself, without closure. John had not given him any words of wisdom that could have helped him figure out how to avoid having to kill Sam. John hadn't left them any worldly possessions to remember him by. There had been no memories of softness or quiet love, only years upon years of neglect and gruffness.

John had died for Dean. Dean could have killed him again for that.

No baseball games, no trips to the ice cream shop, no proud days where Dean or Sam might have been able to bring their dad to school for show-and-tell. No way to have bragged to the friends Sam or Dean might have made about the good work their dad had done, not without having looked like absolute liars. Even children's credulity could be stretched too far, and some of the kids Dean or Sam had been honest with had suddenly stopped coming over.

Time after John's death had been a blur to Dean. He had remembered repeated impacts to a metal frame. Each strike hadn't been hard enough. His arms had ached and screamed every time he had swung a crowbar. He had kept hitting the frame harder and harder, eyes filled with tears and grit. He had only been able to stop when the crowbar had finally dropped from his hands, gone nerveless from the hits. For added measure, he had tried to beat the car frame in with his loosely-held hands, and when the blood had kept smearing the primer-gray finish, he had tried kicking at it until he had fallen down.

Dean hadn't been able to open his hands for days after that. It hadn't mattered. They had been strictly told to stay with Bobby as long as they had needed. Without wheels, Dean and Sam had been stuck there anyway.

Bobby had been solicitous. Bobby had made Dean eat soup when Dean had nearly passed out after a long day in the scrapyard. Bobby had tended to his hands without comment after that disastrous day first trying to fix, then beating the shit out of the Impala's twisted body. Bobby, who had probably thought Dean was asleep, had draped a blanket over Dean where he had lain, eyes shut, on the couch in the cluttered living room. Bobby hadn't let Sam try to force Dean to speak, even if Bobby _had_ let Sam sleep near him at night, sometimes even in the same bed. Dean had felt Sam's hand over his heart in the moments before he slept, crowded in a bed too small for one full-grown man, let alone two large ones.

Dean had wished, with all of what had been left of his heart, that Bobby had been his father, not John.

Months later, Dean and Sam had still had to keep cleaning up John's messes. John had managed to piss off a lot of other hunters, which left their options for help bad at worst, unlikely at best. John had stayed a shadow over their heads long after he had died. Long after Dean had bargained his soul away to save the only blood-family who had really mattered to him, John had still loomed, hateful presence eating at Dean's mind, keeping him angry and unable to focus.

Dean had made damn sure Sam had never seen him fill the prescription for ulcer medication. Sam hadn't needed to know what Dean's continuing anger had done to his body. Sam, who had started parroting John's lessons at him like a good little soldier boy, hadn't needed to know that Dean wasn't grieving.

Getting ripped apart by the hellhound had almost been a relief. For that one moment after the hellhound had killed him and before he had felt his life drain away, Dean had finally stopped being furious with John for everything he had ever done, or hadn't done.

It had felt like being forgiven.

\---()()---

A tiny baby stared out of the crib. Something pretty was on the ceiling, but kick and squirm though he did, nothing got that pretty thing close enough to touch.

Someone spoke to him, some bigger thing with pretties right in its face, bright like the stuff that grew out of the ground. The bigger thing reached down to him, and the baby grabbed it, a happy sound erupting from his mouth. It made the bigger thing smile, like it needed to burp, like the baby sometimes did. Right then and there, the baby had its first focused thought.

_Mine._

END


End file.
